Configuration

Access to Icinga Web 2

When Tornado is installed, NetEye creates an Icinga Web 2 user neteye-tornado and an associated Icinga Web 2 role neteye_tornado_director_apis, which only gives access to the module Director, with limited authorizations on the actions that Tornado can perform.

Warning

These user and permission are required by the backend, for Tornado to call the Director API–and in particular for the authentication and authorization of the Tornado Director Executor to the APIs of the Icinga Director. Therefore neither the user, nor the associated role must be removed from the system.

In case you need it, for example to reconfigure the Tornado Director Executor, the password for the user neteye-tornado is stored in the file /root/.pwd_icingaweb2_neteye_tornado.

Interface Overview

In today’s world, the UX has become a key point in successful IT products and NetEye wants it to become one of its strongest features, providing a continuously improved GUI to support the users’s daily activities.

For this purpose, NetEye provides a totally redesigned, modern looking and attractive GUI for Tornado, based on solid design and usability guidelines defined by the Carbon Design System

While the new GUI is developed to completely replace the current UI, it is currently in preview and only some features are supported such as processing tree visualization, event-driven testing and multi-tenancy.

The Graphical User Interface allows you to explore the current configuration of your Tornado Instance.

The GUI can be divided in 3 logical blocks. At the top of the screen we find the toolbar, in this area it is possible to change the tenant and enable the edit mode.

Fig. 148 Toolbar

Immediately below we find the most important part: the Processing Tree. All filters and rulesets of the processing tree are shown in hierarchical order. You can navigate the tree by expanding the child nodes of a filter by clicking on the arrow on the left side of the node. When clicking on a node, its details will be shown. In case of a ruleset, in addition to the details, also the list of rules will appear. To see the details of a rule, you can click on the entry in the list of rules.

Fig. 149 Processing Tree

The test event window is a panel that can be opened using the icon in the top right corner, which allows you to send test Events. These Events can be created through a dedicated form and are composed by the following four fields:

• Event type: the type of the Event, such as trap, sms, email, etc.

• Creation time: the Event timestamp defined as an epoch in milliseconds.

• Tenant ID: The tenant ID that will be added to the event. Fill this field if there are filters or conditions related to the tenant ID, otherwise just leave it empty.

• Enable execution of actions: whether the actions of matching rules have to be executed or skipped.

• Payload: the event payload in JSON format.

Fig. 150 Test window

When a test is executed by clicking the “Run Test” button, the linked Event is sent to Tornado and the outcome of the operation will be reported in the Processing Tree.

Following the yellow line it is possible to see the path that the event has taken. The nodes that have matched the event are distinguishable by a full yellow lightning bolt while those partially matched have an empty bolt.

Fig. 151 Processing Tree with an event result

At this point, a rule can be in one of the following states:

• matched: If a rule matched the Event.

• stopped: If a rule matched the Event and then stopped the. execution flow. This happens if the continue flag of the rule is set to false.

• partially matched: If the where condition of the Rule was matched but it was not possible to process the required extracted variables.

• not matched: If the Rule did not match the Event.

Fig. 152 Example of processed rules

• Matched rules: Extract_sender, Extract_subject, Archive_all

• Partially matched: Extract_message

• Not matched: Block_invalid_senders

For each rule in the table, the extracted variables and the generated Action payloads are shown. In addition, all these extracted variables are also shown in the Event Test form.

Fig. 153 Sample of extracted variables

Two other buttons are visible, one for cleaning all the fields of the form and one for cleaning the outcome of the test.

Tornado Processing Tree Editor

The Tornado GUI provides an edit mode that allows to modify the configuration of the Tornado rules’ processing tree directly from NetEye’s web interface. Two important principles have been used for the development of the edit mode and must be understood and taken into account when modifying Tornado’s configuration:

• Implicit Lock Mode. Only one user at a time can modify the processing tree configuration. This prevents multiple users from changing the configuration simultaneously, which might lead to unwanted results and possibly to Tornado not working correctly due to incomplete or wrong configuration. When a user is editing the configuration, the actual, running configuration is left untouched: it continues to be operative and accepts incoming data to be processed.

• Edit Mode. When starting to modify the configuration, Tornado will continue to work with the existing configuration–thanks to the implicit lock mode, while the new changes are saved in a separate draft configuration. The new configuration then must be deployed to become operative.

  This mode has other positive side effects: one does not need to complete the changes in one session, but can stop and then continue at a later point; another user can pick up the draft and complete it; in case of a disaster (like e.g., the abrupt end of the HTTPS connection to the GUI) it is possible to resume the draft from the point where it was left.

Warning

Only one draft at a time is allowed; that is, editing of multiple draft is not supported!

When a user enters the edit mode, a new draft is created on the fly if none is present, which will be an exact copy of the running Tornado configuration. If not present in the draft, a root node of type Filter will be automatically added to the draft.

To check for the correctness of a Draft, without impacting the deployed configuration, it is possible to open the test window also while in Edit Mode. The event will be processed using the Draft and the result will be displayed, while keeping the existing configuration running.

You can add a new node in two ways:

• by clicking on the “Add” button in the top right corner and then selecting the parent node to which you want to add the new node.

• by clicking on the icon with the three dots on each node that from now on we will call overflow menu.

Note

All nodes at the same level are ordered alphabetically

For each node, it is possible to define a name. For a filter, these three more options are available:

• a description

• whether it is active or not

• the filter that should match the event. A specific editor is available for the user to create a valid filter or alternatively it is possible to write it via JSON-based syntax, and examples can be found in the various How-tos present in the tornado section of the User Guide.

Moreover, in Edit mode, each node can be deleted by clicking the delete item available in the overflow menu.

Tornado Rule Editor

The tornado Rule Editor allows to manage the single rules that are in a ruleset. On top of the window, all the parents of the current ruleset are shown, to allow you to quickly check on which leaf of the processing tree the rules shown are located. Like in the processing tree editor, a JSON validator assists you in checking that the syntax of the rules is correct.

In the main area, all the defined rules are shown, together with a number of information about them: name, action, and status (enabled or not).

Like in the Processing Tree Editor, available options differ depending whether the Edit mode is active or not:

When the Edit mode is not active, it is possible to click on the Open test window button on the top right-hand side of the window to check which events the current rule selection would match.

With active Edit mode, the Open test window button is disabled, but new rules can be added, modified, or deleted; each rule can also can be moved along the list with a simple drag and drop.

Import and Export Configuration

The Tornado GUI provides multiple ways to import and export the whole configuration or just a subset of it.

Export Configuration

You have three possibilities to export Tornado configuration or part of it:

1. entire configuration: select the root node from the Processing Tree View and click on the export button to download the entire configuration

2. a node (either a ruleset or a filter): select the node from the Processing Tree View and click on the export button to download the node and its sub-nodes

3. a single rule: navigate to the rules table, select a rule, and click on the export button

Hint

You can backup and download Tornado configuration by exporting the entire configuration.

Import Configuration

You can use the import feature to upload to NetEye a previously downloaded configuration, new custom rules, or even the configuration from another NetEye instance.

When clicking on the import button a popup will appear with the following fields:

• Node File: the file containing the configuration

  Note

  When importing a single rule the field will be labeled as Rule File.

• Replace whole configuration?: If selected, the imported configuration will replace the root node and all of its sub-nodes.

  Hint

  You can restore a previous Tornado configuration by selecting this option.

• Parent Node: The parent node where to add the imported configuration, by default it is set to the currently selected node.

Note

When a node or a rule with the same name of an already existing one is imported, the name of the new node/rule will be suffixed with _imported.

JMESPath Collector

This is a Collector that receives an input in JSON format and allows the creation of Events using the JMESPath JSON query language.

Email Collector

The Email Collector receives a MIME email message as input, parses it, and produces a Tornado Event.

How It Works

When the Email Collector receives a valid MIME email message as input, it parses it and produces a Tornado Event with the extracted data.

For example, given the following input:

Subject: This is a test email
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=foobar
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2016 07:06:22 -0700 (PDT)

--foobar
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This is the plaintext version, in utf-8. Proof by Euro: =E2=82=AC
--foobar
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

PGh0bWw+PGJvZHk+VGhpcyBpcyB0aGUgPGI+SFRNTDwvYj4gdmVyc2lvbiwgaW4g
dXMtYXNjaWkuIFByb29mIGJ5IEV1cm86ICZldXJvOzwvYm9keT48L2h0bWw+Cg==
--foobar--

it will generate this Event:

{
  "type": "email",
  "created_ms": 1554130814854,
  "payload": {
    "date": 1475417182,
    "subject": "This is a test email",
    "to": "",
    "from": "",
    "cc": "",
    "body": "This is the plaintext version, in utf-8. Proof by Euro: €",
    "attachments": []
  }
}

If there are attachments, then attachments that are text files will be in plain text, otherwise they will be encoded in base64.

For example, passing this email with attachments:

From: "Francesco" <francesco@example.com>
Subject: Test for Mail collector - with attachments
To: "Benjamin" <benjamin@example.com>,
 francesco <francesco@example.com>
Cc: thomas@example.com, francesco@example.com
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2016 07:06:22 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
 boundary="------------E5401F4DD68F2F7A872C2A83"
Content-Language: en-US

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------E5401F4DD68F2F7A872C2A83
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<html>Test for Mail collector with attachments</html>

--------------E5401F4DD68F2F7A872C2A83
Content-Type: application/pdf;
 name="sample.pdf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="sample.pdf"

JVBERi0xLjMNCiXi48/TDQoNCjEgMCBvYmoNCjw8DQovVHlwZSAvQ2F0YWxvZw0KT0YNCg==

--------------E5401F4DD68F2F7A872C2A83
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8;
 name="sample.txt"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="sample.txt"

dHh0IGZpbGUgY29udGV4dCBmb3IgZW1haWwgY29sbGVjdG9yCjEyMzQ1Njc4OTA5ODc2NTQz
MjEK
--------------E5401F4DD68F2F7A872C2A83--

will generate this Event:

{
  "type": "email",
  "created_ms": 1554130814854,
  "payload": {
    "date": 1475417182,
    "subject": "Test for Mail collector - with attachments",
    "to": "\"Benjamin\" <benjamin@example.com>, francesco <francesco@example.com>",
    "from": "\"Francesco\" <francesco@example.com>",
    "cc": "thomas@example.com, francesco@example.com",
    "body": "<html>Test for Mail collector with attachments</html>",
    "attachments": [
      {
        "filename": "sample.pdf",
        "mime_type": "application/pdf",
        "encoding": "base64",
        "content": "JVBERi0xLjMNCiXi48/TDQoNCjEgMCBvYmoNCjw8DQovVHlwZSAvQ2F0YWxvZw0KT0YNCg=="
      },
      {
        "filename": "sample.txt",
        "mime_type": "text/plain",
        "encoding": "plaintext",
        "content": "txt file context for email collector\n1234567890987654321\n"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Within the Tornado Event, the filename and mime_type properties of each attachment are the values extracted from the incoming email.

Instead, the encoding property refers to how the content is encoded in the Event itself. It can be one of two types:

• plaintext: The content is included in plain text

• base64: The content is encoded in base64

Particular cases

The email collector follows these rules to generate the Tornado Event:

• If more than one body is present in the email or its subparts, the first valid body found is used, while the others will be ignored

• Content Dispositions different from Inline and Attachment are ignored

• Content Dispositions of type Inline are processed only if the content type is text/*

• The email subparts are not scanned recursively, thus only the subparts at the root level are evaluated

Tornado Email Collector (Executable)

The Email Collector Executable binary is an executable that generates Tornado Events from MIME email inputs.

How It Works

The Email Collector Executable is built on actix.

On startup, it creates a UDS socket where qit listens for incoming email messages. Each email published on the socket is processed by the embedded Email Collector to produce Tornado Events which are, finally, forwarded to the Tornado Engine’s TCP address.

The UDS socket is created with the same user and group as the tornado_email_collector process, with permissions set to 770 (read, write and execute for both the user and the group).

Each client that needs to write an email message to the socket should close the connection as soon as it completes its action. In fact, the Email Collector Executable will not even start processing that email until it receives an EOF signal. Only one email per connection is allowed.

Procmail Example

This client behavior can be obtained, for instance, by using procmail with the following configuration:

## .procmailrc file
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail                 # You should make sure this exists
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail.log

# This is where we ask procmail to write to our UDS socket.
SHELL=/bin/sh
:0
| /usr/bin/socat - /var/run/tornado_email_collector/email.sock 2>&1

A precondition for procmail to work is that the mail server in use must be properly configured to notify procmail whenever it receives new email.

For additional information about how incoming email is processed and the structure of the generated Event, check the documentation specific to the embedded Email Collector.

Note that the Email Collector will support any email client that works with the MIME format and UDS sockets.

Tornado Rsyslog Collector (executable)

The rsyslog Collector binary is an executable that generates Tornado Events from rsyslog inputs.

How It Works

This Collector is meant to be integrated with rsyslog’s own logging through the omprog module. Consequently, it is never started manually, but instead will be started, and managed, directly by rsyslog itself.

Here is an example rsyslog configuration template that pipes logs to the rsyslog-collector (the parameters are explained below):

module(load="omprog")

action(type="omprog"
       binary="/path/to/tornado_rsyslog_collector --some-collector-options")

An example of a fully instantiated startup setup is:

module(load="omprog")

action(type="omprog"
       binary="/path/to/rsyslog_collector --config-dir=/tornado-rsyslog-collector/config --tornado-event-socket-ip=tornado_server_ip --tornado-event-socket-port=4747")

Note that all parameters for the binary option must be on the same line. You will need to place this configuration in a file in your rsyslog directory, for instance:

/etc/rsyslog.d/tornado.conf

In this example the collector will:

• Reads the configuration from the /tornado-rsyslog-collector/config directory

• Write outgoing Events to the TCP socket at tornado_server_ip:4747

The Collector will need to be run in parallel with the Tornado engine before any events will be processed, for example:

/opt/tornado/bin/tornado --tornado-event-socket-ip=tornado_server_ip

Under this configuration, rsyslog is in charge of starting the collector when needed and piping the incoming logs to it. As the last stage, the Tornado Events generated by the collector are forwarded to the Tornado Engine’s TCP socket.

This integration strategy is the best option for supporting high performance given massive amounts of log data.

Because the collector expects the input to be in JSON format, rsyslog should be pre-configured to properly pipe its inputs in this form.

Tornado Webhook Collector (executable)

The Webhook Collector is a standalone HTTP server that listens for REST calls from a generic webhook, generates Tornado Events from the webhook JSON body, and sends them to the Tornado Engine.

How It Works

The webhook collector executable is an HTTP server built on actix-web.

On startup, it creates a dedicated REST endpoint for each configured webhook. Calls received by an endpoint are processed by the embedded JMESPath Collector that uses them to produce Tornado Events. In the final step, the Events are forwarded to the Tornado Engine through the configured connection type.

For each webhook, you must provide three values in order to successfully create an endpoint:

• id: The webhook identifier. This will determine the path of the endpoint; it must be unique per webhook.

• token: A security token that the webhook issuer has to include in the URL as part of the query string (see the example at the bottom of this page for details). If the token provided by the issuer is missing or does not match the one owned by the collector, then the call will be rejected and an HTTP 401 code (UNAUTHORIZED) will be returned.

• collector_config: The transformation logic that converts a webhook JSON object into a Tornado Event. It consists of a JMESPath collector configuration as described in its specific documentation.

Tornado Nats JSON Collector (executable)

The Nats JSON Collector is a standalone collector that listens for JSON messages on Nats topics, generates Tornado Events, and sends them to the Tornado Engine.

How It Works

The Nats JSON collector executable is built on actix.

On startup, it connects to a set of topics on a Nats server. Calls received are then processed by the embedded jmespath collector that uses them to produce Tornado Events. In the final step, the Events are forwarded to the Tornado Engine through the configured connection type.

For each topic, you must provide two values in order to successfully configure them:

• nats_topics: A list of Nats topics to which the collector will subscribe.

• collector_config: (Optional) The transformation logic that converts a JSON object received from Nats into a Tornado Event. It consists of a JMESPath collector configuration as described in its specific documentation.

Tornado Icinga 2 Collector (executable)

The Icinga 2 Collector subscribes to the Icinga 2 API event streams, generates Tornado Events from the Icinga 2 Events, and publishes them on the Tornado Engine TCP address.

How It Works

The Icinga 2 collector executable is built on actix.

On startup, it connects to an existing Icinga 2 Server API and subscribes to user defined Event Streams. Each Icinga 2 Event published on the stream, is processed by the embedded jmespath collector that uses them to produce Tornado Events which are, finally, forwarded to the Tornado Engine’s TCP address.

More than one stream subscription can be defined. For each stream, you must provide two values in order to successfully create a subscription:

• stream: the stream configuration composed of:

  • types: An array of Icinga 2 Event types;

  • queue: A unique queue name used by Icinga 2 to identify the stream;

  • filter: An optional Event Stream filter. Additional information about the filter can be found in the official documentation.

• collector_config: The transformation logic that converts an Icinga 2 Event into a Tornado Event. It consists of a JMESPath collector configuration as described in its specific documentation.

Note

Based on the Icinga 2 Event Streams documentation, multiple HTTP clients can use the same queue name as long as they use the same event types and filter.

SNMP Trap Daemon Collectors

The _snmptrapd_collector_s of this package are embedded Perl trap handlers for Net-SNMP’s snmptrapd. When registered as a subroutine in the Net-SNMP snmptrapd process, they receives snmptrap-specific inputs, transforms them into Tornado Events, and forwards them to the Tornado Engine.

There are two collector implementations, the first one sends Events directly to the Tornado TCP socket and the second one forwards them to a NATS server.

The implementations rely on the Perl NetSNMP::TrapReceiver package. You can refer to its documentation for generic configuration examples and usage advice.

How They Work

The _snmptrapd_collector_s receive snmptrapd messages, parse them, generate Tornado Events and, finally, sends them to Tornado using their specific communication channel.

The received messages are kept in an in-memory non-persistent buffer that makes the application resilient to crashes or temporary unavailability of the communication channel. When the connection to the channel is restored, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collectors will start discarding old messages. The buffer max size is set to 10000 messages.

Consider a snmptrapd message that contains the following information:

PDU INFO:
  version                        1
  errorstatus                    0
  community                      public
  receivedfrom                   UDP: [127.0.1.1]:41543->[127.0.2.2]:162
  transactionid                  1
  errorindex                     0
  messageid                      0
  requestid                      414568963
  notificationtype               TRAP
VARBINDS:
  iso.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0            type=67 value=Timeticks: (1166403) 3:14:24.03
  iso.3.6.1.6.3.1.1.4.1.0        type=6  value=OID: iso.3.6.1.4.1.8072.2.3.0.1
  iso.3.6.1.4.1.8072.2.3.2.1     type=2  value=INTEGER: 123456

The collector will produce this Tornado Event:

{
   "type":"snmptrapd",
   "created_ms":"1553765890000",
   "payload":{
      "protocol":"UDP",
      "src_ip":"127.0.1.1",
      "src_port":"41543",
      "dest_ip":"127.0.2.2",
      "PDUInfo":{
         "version":"1",
         "errorstatus":"0",
         "community":"public",
         "receivedfrom":"UDP: [127.0.1.1]:41543->[127.0.2.2]:162",
         "transactionid":"1",
         "errorindex":"0",
         "messageid":"0",
         "requestid":"414568963",
         "notificationtype":"TRAP"
      },
      "oids":{
         "iso.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0":"67",
         "iso.3.6.1.6.3.1.1.4.1.0":"6",
         "iso.3.6.1.4.1.8072.2.3.2.1":"2"
      }
   }
}

The structure of the generated Event is not configurable.

JMESPath Collector Configuration

The Collector configuration is composed of two named values:

• event_type: Identifies the type of Event, and can be a String or a JMESPath expression (see below).

• payload: A Map<String, ValueProcessor> with event-specific data.

and here the payload ValueProcessor can be one of:

• A null value

• A string

• A bool value (i.e., true or false)

• A number

• An array of values

• A map of type Map<String, ValueProcessor>

• A JMESPath expression : A valid JMESPath expression delimited by the ‘${’ and ‘}’ characters.

The Collector configuration defines the structure of the Event produced. The configuration’s event_type property will define the type of Event, while the Event’s payload will have the same structure as the configuration’s payload.

How it Works

The JMESPath expressions of the configuration will be applied to incoming inputs, and the results will be included in the Event produced. All other ValueProcessors, instead, are copied without modification.

For example, consider the following configuration:

{
    "event_type": "webhook",
    "payload": {
        "name" : "${reference.authors[0]}",
        "from": "jmespath-collector",
        "active": true
    }
}

The value ${reference.authors[0]} is a JMESPath expression, delimited by ${ and }, and whose value depends on the incoming input.

Thus if this input is received:

{
    "date": "today",
    "reference": {
        "authors" : [
          "Francesco",
          "Thomas"
        ]
    }
}

then the Collector will produce this Event:

{
    "event_type": "webhook",
    "payload": {
        "name" : "Francesco",
        "from": "jmespath-collector",
        "active": true
    }
}

Runtime behavior

When the JMESPath expression returns an array or a map, the entire object will be inserted as-is into the Event.

However, if a JMESPath expression does not return a valid result, then no Event is created, and an error is produced.

Email Collector Configuration

The executable configuration is based partially on configuration files, and partially on command line parameters.

The available startup parameters are:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the collector configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado_email_collector/.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/email_collector.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• email_collector:

  • tornado_event_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • tornado_event_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. This entry is mandatory if tornado_connection_channel is set to TCP. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • message_queue_size: The in-memory buffer size for Events. It makes the application resilient to Tornado Engine crashes or temporary unavailability. When Tornado restarts, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collector will start discarding older messages first.

  • uds_path: The Unix Socket path on which the collector will listen for incoming emails.

  • tornado_connection_channel: The channel to send events to Tornado. It contains the set of entries required to configure a Nats or a TCP connection. Beware that this entry will be taken into account only if ``tornado_event_socket_ip`` and ``tornado_event_socket_port`` are not provided.

    • In case of connection using Nats, these entries are mandatory:

      • nats.client.addresses: The addresses of the NATS server.

      • nats.client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle: The path to a PKCS12 file that will be used for authenticating to NATS (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password: The password to decrypt the provided PKCS12 file (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events.

    • In case of connection using TCP, these entries are mandatory:

      • tcp_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

      • tcp_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

More information about the logger configuration is available in the Common Logger documentation.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_EMAIL_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_EMAIL_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo
build

An example of a full startup command is:

./tornado_email_collector \
      --config-dir=/tornado-email-collector/config \

In this example the Email Collector starts up and then reads the configuration from the /tornado-email-collector/config directory.

Tornado Rsyslog Collector Configuration

The executable configuration is based partially on configuration files, and partially on command line parameters.

The available startup parameters are:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the collector configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado_rsyslog_collector/.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/rsyslog_collector.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• rsyslog_collector:

  • tornado_event_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • tornado_event_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. This entry is mandatory if tornado_connection_channel is set to TCP. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • message_queue_size: The in-memory buffer size for Events. It makes the application resilient to Tornado Engine crashes or temporary unavailability. When Tornado restarts, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collector will start discarding older messages first.

  • tornado_connection_channel: The channel to send events to Tornado. It contains the set of entries required to configure a Nats or a TCP connection. Beware that this entry will be taken into account only if ``tornado_event_socket_ip`` and ``tornado_event_socket_port`` are not provided.

    • In case of connection using Nats, these entries are mandatory:

      • nats.client.addresses: The addresses of the NATS server.

      • nats.client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle: The path to a PKCS12 file that will be used for authenticating to NATS (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password: The password to decrypt the provided PKCS12 file (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events.

    • In case of connection using TCP, these entries are mandatory:

      • tcp_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

      • tcp_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

More information about the logger configuration is available in the Common Logger documentation.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_RSYSLOG_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_RSYSLOG_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo build

Tornado Webhook Collector Configuration

The executable configuration is based partially on configuration files, and partially on command line parameters.

The available startup parameters are:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the collector configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado_webhook_collector/.

• webhooks-dir: The folder where the Webhook configurations are saved in JSON format; this folder is relative to the config_dir. The default value is /webhooks/.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/webhook_collector.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• webhook_collector:

  • tornado_event_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • tornado_event_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. This entry is mandatory if tornado_connection_channel is set to TCP. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • message_queue_size: The in-memory buffer size for Events. It makes the application resilient to errors or temporary unavailability of the Tornado connection channel. When the connection on the channel is restored, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collector will start discarding older messages first.

  • server_bind_address: The IP to bind the HTTP server to.

  • server_port: The port to be used by the HTTP Server.

  • tornado_connection_channel: The channel to send events to Tornado. It contains the set of entries required to configure a Nats or a TCP connection. Beware that this entry will be taken into account only if ``tornado_event_socket_ip`` and ``tornado_event_socket_port`` are not provided.

    • In case of connection using Nats, these entries are mandatory:

      • nats.client.addresses: The addresses of the NATS server.

      • nats.client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle: The path to a PKCS12 file that will be used for authenticating to NATS (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password: The password to decrypt the provided PKCS12 file (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events.

    • In case of connection using TCP, these entries are mandatory:

      • tcp_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

      • tcp_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

More information about the logger configuration can be found in the Common Logger documentation.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_WEBHOOK_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_WEBHOOK_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo build

An example of a full startup command is:

./tornado_webhook_collector \
      --config-dir=/tornado-webhook-collector/config

In this example the Webhook Collector starts up and then reads the configuration from the /tornado-webhook-collector/config directory.

Webhooks Configuration

As described before, the two startup parameters config-dir and webhooks-dir determine the path to the Webhook configurations, and each webhook is configured by providing id, token and collector_config.

As an example, consider how to configure a webhook for a repository hosted on Github.

If we start the application using the command line provided in the previous section, the webhook configuration files should be located in the /tornado-webhook-collector/config/webhooks directory. Each configuration is saved in a separate file in that directory in JSON format (the order shown in the directory is not necessarily the order in which the hooks are processed):

/tornado-webhook-collector/config/webhooks
                 |- github.json
                 |- bitbucket_first_repository.json
                 |- bitbucket_second_repository.json
                 |- ...

An example of valid content for a Webhook configuration JSON file is:

{
  "id": "github_repository",
  "token": "secret_token",
  "collector_config": {
    "event_type": "${commits[0].committer.name}",
    "payload": {
      "source": "github",
      "ref": "${ref}",
      "repository_name": "${repository.name}"
    }
  }
}

This configuration assumes that this endpoint has been created:

http(s)://collector_ip:collector_port/event/github_repository

However, the Github webhook issuer must pass the token at each call. Consequently, the actual URL to be called will have this structure:

http(s)://collector_ip:collector_port/event/github_repository?token=secret_token

Security warning: Since the security token is present in the query string, it is extremely important that the webhook collector is always deployed with HTTPS in production. Otherwise, the token will be sent unencrypted along with the entire URL.

Consequently, if the public IP of the collector is, for example, 35.35.35.35 and the server port is 1234, in Github, the webhook settings page should look like in Fig. 154.

Fig. 154 Configuring a GitHub webhook.

Finally, the collector_config configuration entry determines the content of the tornado Event associated with each webhook input.

So for example, if Github sends this JSON (only the relevant parts shown here):

{
  "ref": "refs/heads/master",
  "commits": [
    {
      "id": "33ad3a6df86748011ee8d5cef13d206322abc68e",
      "committer": {
        "name": "GitHub",
        "email": "noreply@github.com",
        "username": "web-flow"
      }
    }
  ],
  "repository": {
    "id": 123456789,
    "name": "webhook-test"
  }
}

then the resulting Event will be:

{
  "type": "GitHub",
  "created_ms": 1554130814854,
  "payload": {
    "source": "github",
    "ref": "refs/heads/master",
    "repository_name": "webhook-test"
  }
}

The Event creation logic is handled internally by the JMESPath collector, a detailed description of which is available in its specific documentation.

Tornado Nats JSON Collector Configuration

The executable configuration is based partially on configuration files, and partially on command line parameters.

The available startup parameters are:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the collector configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado_nats_json_collector/.

• topics-dir: The folder where the topic configurations are saved in JSON format; this folder is relative to the config_dir. The default value is /topics/.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/nats_json_collector.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• nats_json_collector:

  • message_queue_size: The in-memory buffer size for Events. It makes the application resilient to errors or temporary unavailability of the Tornado connection channel. When the connection on the channel is restored, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collector will start discarding older messages first.

  • nats_client.addresses: The addresses of the NATS server.

  • nats_client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

  • nats_client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle: The path to a PKCS12 file that will be used for authenticating to NATS (Mandatory if nats_client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • nats_client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password: The password to decrypt the provided PKCS12 file (Mandatory if nats_client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • nats_client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats_client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • tornado_connection_channel: The channel to send events to Tornado. It contains the set of entries required to configure a Nats or a TCP connection.

    • In case of connection using Nats, these entries are mandatory:

      • nats_subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events.

    • In case of connection using TCP, these entries are mandatory:

      • tcp_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

      • tcp_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

More information about the logger configurationis available in the Common Logger documentation.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_NATS_JSON_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_NATS_JSON_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo build

An example of a full startup command is:

./tornado_nats_json_collector \
      --config-dir=/tornado-nats-json-collector/config

In this example the Nats JSON Collector starts up and then reads the configuration from the /tornado-nats-json-collector/config directory.

Topics Configuration

As described before, the two startup parameters config-dir and topics-dir determine the path to the topic configurations, and each topic is configured by providing nats_topics and collector_config.

As an example, consider how to configure a “simple_test” topic.

If we start the application using the command line provided in the previous section, the topics configuration files should be located in the /tornado-nats-json-collector/config/topics directory. Each configuration is saved in a separate file in that directory in JSON format (the order shown in the directory is not necessarily the order in which the topics are processed):

/tornado-nats-json-collector/config/topics
                 |- simple_test.json
                 |- something_else.json
                 |- ...

An example of valid content for a Topic configuration JSON file is:

{
  "nats_topics": ["simple_test_one", "simple_test_two"],
  "collector_config": {
    "event_type": "${content.type}",
    "payload": {
      "ref": "${content.ref}",
      "repository_name": "${repository}"
    }
  }
}

With this configuration, two subscriptions are created to the Nats topics simple_test_one and simple_test_two. Messages received by those topics are processed using the collector_config that determines the content of the tornado Event associated with them.

It is important to note that, if a Nats topic name is used more than once, then the collector will perfom multiple subscriptions accordingly. This can happen if a topic name is duplicated into the nats_topics array or in multiple JSON files.

So for example, if this JSON message is received:

{
  "content": {
    "type": "content_type",
    "ref": "refs/heads/master"
  },
  "repository": {
    "id": 123456789,
    "name": "webhook-test"
  }
}

then the resulting Event will be:

{
  "type": "content_type",
  "created_ms": 1554130814854,
  "payload": {
    "ref": "refs/heads/master",
    "repository": {
        "id": 123456789,
        "name": "webhook-test"
      }
  }
}

The Event creation logic is handled internally by the JMESPath collector, a detailed description of which is available in its specific documentation.

Default values

The collector_config section and all of its internal entries are optional. If not provided explicitly, the collector will use these predefined values:

• When the collector_config.event_type is not provided, the name of the Nats topic that sent the message is used as Event type.

• When the collector_config.payload is not provided, the entire source message is included in the payload of the generated Event with the key data.

Consequently, the simplest valid topic configuration contains only the nats_topics:

{
  "nats_topics": ["subject_one", "subject_two"]
}

The above one is equivalent to:

{
  "nats_topics": ["subject_one", "subject_two"],
  "collector_config": {
    "payload": {
      "data": "${@}"
    }
  }
}

In this case the generated Tornado Events have type equals to the topic name and the whole source data in their payload.

Tornado Icinga 2 Collector Configuration

The executable configuration is based partially on configuration files, and partially on command line parameters.

The available startup parameters are:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the collector configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado_icinga2_collector/.

• streams_dir: The folder where the Stream configurations are saved in JSON format; this folder is relative to the config_dir. The default value is /streams/.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/icinga2_collector.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• icinga2_collector

  • tornado_event_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • tornado_event_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events. This entry is mandatory if tornado_connection_channel is set to TCP. If present, this value overrides what specified by the tornado_connection_channel entry. This entry is deprecated and will be removed in the next release of tornado. Please, use the ``tornado_connection_channel`` instead.

  • message_queue_size: The in-memory buffer size for Events. It makes the application resilient to Tornado Engine crashes or temporary unavailability. When Tornado restarts, all messages in the buffer will be sent. When the buffer is full, the collector will start discarding older messages first.

  • connection

    • server_api_url: The complete URL of the Icinga 2 Event Stream API.

    • username: The username used to connect to the Icinga 2 APIs.

    • password: The password used to connect to the Icinga 2 APIs.

    • disable_ssl_verification: A boolean value. If true, the client will not verify the Icinga 2 SSL certificate.

    • sleep_ms_between_connection_attempts: In case of connection failure, the number of milliseconds to wait before a new connection attempt.

  • tornado_connection_channel: The channel to send events to Tornado. It contains the set of entries required to configure a Nats or a TCP connection. Beware that this entry will be taken into account only if ``tornado_event_socket_ip`` and ``tornado_event_socket_port`` are not provided.

    • In case of connection using Nats, these entries are mandatory:

      • nats.client.addresses: The addresses of the NATS server.

      • nats.client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle: The path to a PKCS12 file that will be used for authenticating to NATS (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password: The password to decrypt the provided PKCS12 file (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

      • nats.subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events.

    • In case of connection using TCP, these entries are mandatory:

      • tcp_socket_ip: The IP address where outgoing events will be written. This should be the address where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

      • tcp_socket_port: The port where outgoing events will be written. This should be the port where the Tornado Engine listens for incoming events.

More information about the logger configuration is available in the Common Logger documentation.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_ICINGA2_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_ICINGA2_COLLECTOR_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo
build

An example of a full startup command is:

./tornado_webhook_collector \
      --config-dir=/tornado-icinga2-collector/config

In this example the Icinga 2 Collector starts up and then reads the configuration from the /tornado-icinga2-collector/config directory.

Streams Configuration

As described before, the two startup parameters config-dir and streams-dir determine the path to the stream configurations.

For example, if we start the application using the command line provided in the previous section, the stream configuration files should be located in the /tornado-icinga2-collector/config/streams directory. Each configuration is saved in a separate file in that directory in JSON format:

/tornado-icinga2-collector/config/streams
                 |- 001_CheckResults.json
                 |- 002_Notifications.json
                 |- ...

The alphabetical ordering of the files has no impaact on the collector’s logic.

An example of valid content for a stream configuration JSON file is:

{
  "stream": {
    "types": ["CheckResult"],
    "queue": "icinga2_CheckResult",
    "filter": "event.check_result.exit_status==2"
  },
  "collector_config": {
    "event_type": "icinga2_event",
    "payload": {
      "source": "icinga2",
      "icinga2_event": "${@}"
     }
  }
}

This stream subscription will receive all Icinga 2 Events of type ‘CheckResult’ with ‘exit_status’=2. It will then produce a Tornado Event with type ‘icinga2_event’ and the entire Icinga 2 Event in the payload with key ‘icinga2_event’.

The Event creation logic is handled internally by the JMESPath collector, a detailed description of which is available in its specific documentation.

SNMPTrapd TCP Collector Configuration

Prerequisites

This collector has the following runtime requirements:

• Perl 5.16 or greater

• Perl packages required:

  • Cpanel::JSON::XS

  • NetSNMP::TrapReceiver

You can verify that the Perl packages are available with the command:

$ perl -e 'use Cpanel::JSON::XS;' && \
  perl -e 'use NetSNMP::TrapReceiver;'

If no messages are displayed in the console, then everything is okay; otherwise, you will see error messages.

In case of missing dependencies, use your system’s package manager to install them.

For example, the required Perl packages can be installed on an Ubuntu system with:

$ sudo apt install libcpanel-json-xs-perl libsnmp-perl

Activation

This Collector is meant to be integrated with snmptrapd. To activate it, put the following line in your snmptrapd.conf file:

perl do "/path_to_the_script/snmptrapd_tcp_collector.pl";

Consequently, it is never started manually, but instead will be started, and managed, directly by snmptrapd itself.

At startup, if the collector is configured properly, you should see this entry either in the logs or in the daemon’s standard error output:

The TCP based snmptrapd_collector was loaded successfully.

Configuration options

The address of the Tornado Engine TCP instance to which the events are forwarded is configured with the following environment variables:

• TORNADO_ADDR: the IP address of Tornado Engine. If not specified, it will use the default value 127.0.0.1

• TORNADO_PORT: the port of the TCP socket of Tornado Engine. If not specified, it will use the default value 4747

SNMPTrapd NATS Collector Configuration

Prerequisites

This collector has the following runtime requirements:

• Perl 5.16 or greater

• Perl packages required:

  • Cpanel::JSON::XS

  • Net::NATS::Client

  • NetSNMP::TrapReceiver

You can verify that the Perl packages are available with the command:

$ perl -e 'use Cpanel::JSON::XS;' && \
  perl -e 'use Net::NATS::Client;' && \
  perl -e 'use NetSNMP::TrapReceiver;'

If no messages are displayed in the console, then everything is okay; otherwise, you will see error messages.

In case of missing dependencies, use your system’s package manager to install them.

Instructions for installing Net::NATS::Client are available at its official repository

Activation

This Collector is meant to be integrated with snmptrapd. To activate it, put the following line in your snmptrapd.conf file:

perl do "/path_to_the_script/snmptrapd_collector.pl";

Consequently, it is never started manually, but instead will be started, and managed, directly by snmptrapd itself.

At startup, if the collector is configured properly, you should see this entry either in the logs or in the daemon’s standard error output:

The snmptrapd_collector for NATS was loaded successfully.

Configuration options

The information to connect to the NATS Server are provided by the following environment variables:

• TORNADO_NATS_ADDR: the address of the NATS server. If not specified, it will use the default value 127.0.0.1:4222

• TORNADO_NATS_SUBJECT: the NATS subject where the events are published. If not specified, it will use the default value tornado.events

• TORNADO_NATS_SSL_CERT_PEM_FILE: The filesystem path of a PEM certificate. This entry is optional, when provided, the collector will use the certificate to connect to the NATS server

• TORNADO_NATS_SSL_CERT_KEY: The filesystem path for the KEY of the PEM certificate provided by the TORNADO_NATS_SSL_CERT_PEM_FILE entry. This entry is mandatory if the TORNADO_NATS_SSL_CERT_PEM_FILE entry is provided

Tornado Engine CLI Commands and Configuration

The Tornado CLI has commands that allow you to use the functionality provided. Running the Tornado executable without any arguments returns a list of all available commands and global options that apply to every command.

Tornado commands:

• __apm-tracing enable|disable__ : Enable or disable the APM priority logger output.

  When used with enable, it:

  • enables the APM logger

  • disables the stdout logger output

  • sets logger level to info,tornado=debug

  When used with disable, it:

  • disables the APM logger

  • enables the stdout logger output

  • sets logger level to value from the configuration file

• check : Checks that the configuration is valid.

• daemon : Starts the Tornado daemon.

• help : Prints the general help page, or the specific help of the given command.

• rules-upgrade : Checks the current configuration and, if available, upgrades the rules structure to the most recent one.

• filter-create : Creates a Filter at the root level of the current configuration and of the open drafts.

  Parameters:

  • name: The name of the Filter to be created.

  • json-definition: The JSON representation of the Filter.

  In case a Node with the same name already exists at the root level of the configuration, the following will happen:

  • If the existing node is a Ruleset, it will be renamed to: <ruleset_name>_backup_<timestamp_in_milliseconds>.

  • If the existing node is a Filter having a different filter definition, it will be renamed to: <filter_name>_backup_<timestamp_in_milliseconds>.

  • If the existing node is a Filter having the same filter definition, nothing will be done.

Each CLI command provides its own help and usage information, you can display using the help command.

For example, with this command you can show the help page and options of daemon:

./tornado_engine help daemon

The Tornado configuration is partly based on configuration files and partly based on command line parameters. The location of configuration files in the file system is determined at startup based on the provided CLI options.

Tornado global options:

• config-dir: The filesystem folder from which the Tornado configuration is read. The default path is /etc/tornado.

• rules-dir: The folder where the Rules are saved in JSON format; this folder is relative to config_dir. The default value is /rules.d/.

The check command does not have any specific options.

The daemon command has options specified in the tornado.daemon section of the tornado.toml configuration file.

In addition to these parameters, the following configuration entries are available in the file ‘config-dir’/tornado.toml:

• logger:

  • level: The Logger level; valid values are trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

  • stdout: Determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

  • file_output_path: A file path in the file system; if provided, the Logger will append any output to it.

• tornado.daemon

  • thread_pool_config: The configuration of the thread pools bound to the internal queues. This entry is optional and should be rarely configured manually. For more details see the following Structure and Configuration: The Thread Pool Configuration section.

  • retry_strategy.retry_policy: The global retry policy for reprocessing failed actions. (Optional. Defaults to MaxAttempts if not provided). For more details see the following Structure and Configuration: Retry Strategy Configuration section.

  • retry_strategy.backoff_policy: The global back-off policy for reprocessing failed actions. (Mandatory only if retry_strategy.retry_policy is provided). For more details see the following Structure and Configuration: Retry Strategy Configuration section.

  • event_tcp_socket_enabled: Whether to enable the TCP server for incoming events (Optional. Valid values are true and false. Defaults to true if not provided).

  • event_socket_ip: The IP address where Tornado will listen for incoming events (Mandatory if event_tcp_socket_enabled is set to true).

  • event_socket_port: The port where Tornado will listen for incoming events (Mandatory if event_tcp_socket_enabled is set to true).

  • nats_enabled: Whether to connect to the NATS server (Optional. Valid values are true and false. Defaults to false if not provided).

  • nats_extractors: List of data extractors for incoming Nats messages (Optional). Valid extractors are:

    • FromSubject: using a regex, extracts the first matching group from the Nats subject and adds its value to the event.metadata scope using the specified key. Example:

      nats_extractors = [
          { type = "FromSubject", key = "tenant_id", regex = "^([^.]+)\\.tornado\\.events" }
      ]
      

  • nats.client.addresses: Array of addresses of the NATS nodes of a cluster. (Mandatory if nats_enabled is set to true).

  • nats.subject: The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events (Mandatory if nats_enabled is set to true).

  • nats.client.auth.type: The type of authentication used to authenticate to NATS (Optional. Valid values are None and Tls. Defaults to None if not provided).

  • nats.client.auth.certificate_path: The path to the client certificate that will be used for authenticating to NATS. (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • nats.client.auth.private_key_path: The path to the client certificate private key that will be used for authenticating to NATS. (Mandatory if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate: The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system’s trust root. May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. (Optional, valid if nats.client.auth.type is set to Tls).

  • web_server_ip: The IP address where the Tornado Web Server will listen for HTTP requests. This is used, for example, by the monitoring endpoints.

  • web_server_port: The port where the Tornado Web Server will listen for HTTP requests.

  • web_max_json_payload_size: The max JSON size in bytes accepted by a Tornado endpoint. (Optional. Defaults to 67108860 (i.e. 64MB))

More information about the logger configuration is available in section Common Logger.

The default config-dir value can be customized at build time by specifying the environment variable TORNADO_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT. For example, this will build an executable that uses /my/custom/path as the default value:

TORNADO_CONFIG_DIR_DEFAULT=/my/custom/path cargo build

The command-specific options should always be used after the command name, while the global ones always precede it. An example of a full startup command is:

./tornado_engine
    --config-dir=./tornado/engine/config \
    daemon

In this case, the CLI executes the daemon command that starts the Engine with the configuration read from the ./tornado/engine/config directory. In addition, it will search for Filter and Rule definitions in the ./tornado/engine/config/rules.d directory in order to build the processing tree.

Structure and Configuration: The Thread Pool Configuration

Even if the default configuration should suit most of the use cases, in some particular situations it could be useful to customise the size of the internal queues used by Tornado. Tornado utilizes these queues to process incoming events and to dispatch triggered actions.

Tornado uses a dedicated thread pool per queue; the size of each queue is by default equal to the number of available logical CPUs. Consequently, in case of an action of type script, for example, Tornado will be able to run in parallel at max as many scripts as the number of CPUs.

This default behaviour can be overridden by providing a custom configuration for the thread pools size. This is achieved through the optional tornado_pool_config entry in the tornado.daemon section of the Tornado.toml configuration file.

Example of how to dynamically configure the thread pool based on the available CPUs:

[tornado.daemon]
thread_pool_config = {type = "CPU", factor = 1.0}

In this case, the size of the thread pool will be equal to (number of available logical CPUs) multiplied by (factor) rounded to the smallest integer greater than or equal to a number. If the resulting value is less than 1, then 1 will be used be default.

For example, if there are 16 available CPUs, then:

• {type: "CPU", factor: 0.5} => thread pool size is 8

• {type: "CPU", factor: 2.0} => thread pool size is 32

Example of how to statically configure the thread pool based:

[tornado.daemon]
thread_pool_config = {type = "Fixed", size = 20}

In this case, the size of the thread pool is statically fixed at 20. If the provided size is less than 1, then 1 will be used be default.

Structure and Configuration: Retry Strategy Configuration

Tornado allows the configuration of a global retry strategy to be applied when the execution of an Action fails.

A retry strategy is composed by:

• retry policy: the policy that defines whether an action execution should be retried after an execution failure;

• backoff policy: the policy that defines the sleep time between retries.

Valid values for the retry policy are:

• {type = "MaxRetries", retries = 5} => A predefined maximum amount of retry attempts. This is the default value with a retries set to 20.

• {type = "None"} => No retries are performed.

• {type = "Infinite"} => The operation will be retried an infinite number of times. This setting must be used with extreme caution as it could fill the entire memory buffer preventing Tornado from processing incoming events.

Valid values for the backoff policy are:

• {type = "Exponential", ms = 1000, multiplier = 2 }: It increases the back off period for each retry attempt in a given set using the exponential function. The period to sleep on the first backoff is the ms; the multiplier is instead used to calculate the next backoff interval from the last. This is the default configuration.

• {type = "None"}: No sleep time between retries. This is the default value.

• {type = "Fixed", ms = 1000 }: A fixed amount of milliseconds to sleep between each retry attempt.

• {type = "Variable", ms = [1000, 5000, 10000]}: The amount of milliseconds between two consecutive retry attempts.

  The time to wait after ‘i’ retries is specified in the vector at position ‘i’.

  If the number of retries is bigger than the vector length, then the last value in the vector is used. For example:

  ms = [111,222,333] -> It waits 111 ms after the first failure, 222 ms after the second failure and then 333 ms for all following failures.

Example of a complete Retry Strategy configuration:

[tornado.daemon]
retry_strategy.retry_policy = {type = "Infinite"}
retry_strategy.backoff_policy = {type = "Variable", ms = [1000, 5000, 10000]}

When not provided explicitly, the following default Retry Strategy is used:

[tornado.daemon]
retry_strategy.retry_policy = {type = "MaxRetries", retries = 20}
retry_strategy.backoff_policy = {type = "Exponential", ms = 1000, multiplier = 2 }

Structure and Configuration: Enable the TCP event socket

Enabling the TCP event socket server allows Tornado to receive events through a direct TCP connection.

The TCP event socket configuration entries are available in the tornado.toml file. Example of the TCP socket section the tornado.toml file:

# Whether to enable the TCP listener
event_tcp_socket_enabled = true
# The IP address where we will listen for incoming events.
event_socket_ip = "127.0.0.1"
#The port where we will listen for incoming events.
event_socket_port = 4747

In this case, Tornado will listen for incoming events on the TCP address 127.0.0.1:4747.

Structure and Configuration: Enable the Nats connection

Enabling the Nats connection allows Tornado to receive events published on a Nats cluster.

The Nats configuration entries are available in the tornado.toml file. Example of the Nats section the tornado.toml file:

# Whether to connect to the NATS server
nats_enabled = true

# The addresses of the NATS server
nats.client.addresses = ["127.0.0.1:4222"]
# The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events
nats.subject = "tornado.events"

In this case, Tornado will connect to the “test-cluster” and listen for incoming events published on “tornado.events” subject. Also, since nats.client.auth.type is not provided, Tornado will not authenticate to the NATS server.

At the moment, when the nats_enabled entry is set to true, it is required that the Nats server is available at Tornado startup.

Structure and Configuration: Nats authentication

Available authentication types for Tornado are:

• None: Tornado does not authenticate to the NATS server

• Tls: Tornado authenticates to the NATS server via certificates with TLS

If not differently specified, Tornado will use the None authentication type.

If you want instead to enable TLS authentication to the NATS server you need something similar to the following configuration:

# Whether to connect to the NATS server
nats_enabled = true

# The addresses of the NATS server
nats.client.addresses = ["127.0.0.1:4222"]
# The NATS Subject where tornado will subscribe and listen for incoming events
nats.subject = "tornado.events"
# The type of authentication used when connecting to the NATS server
#nats.client.auth.type = "None"
nats.client.auth.type = "Tls"
# The path to a pkcs12 bundle file which contains the certificate and private key to authenicate to the NATS server
nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle = "/path/to/pkcs12/bundle.pfx"
# The password used to decrypt the pkcs12 bundle
nats.client.auth.pkcs12_bundle_password = "mypwd"
# The path to a root certificate (in .pem format) to trust in addition to system's trust root.
# May be useful if the NATS server is not trusted by the system as default. Optional
#nats.client.auth.path_to_root_certificate = "/path/to/root/certificate.crt.pem"

In this case Tornado will authenticate to the NATS server using the certificate in the file specified in the field nats.client.auth.path_to_pkcs12_bundle, using the password mypwd to decrypt the file.

Structure and Configuration: The Archive Executor

The archive executor processes and executes Actions of type “archive”. This executor configuration is specified in the archive_executor.toml file in the Tornado config folder.

For instance, if Tornado is started with the command:

tornado --config-dir=/tornado/config

then the configuration file’s full path will be /tornado/config/archive_executor.toml.

The archive_executor.toml file has the following structure:

base_path =  "./target/tornado-log"
default_path = "/default/file.log"
file_cache_size = 10
file_cache_ttl_secs = 1

[paths]
"one" = "/one/file.log"

More details about the meaning of each entry and how the archive executor functions can be found in the executor documentation.

Structure and Configuration: The Elasticsearch Executor

The Elasticsearch executor processes and executes Actions of type “elasticsearch”. The configuration for this executor is specified in the elasticsearch_executor.toml file into the Tornado config folder.

For instance, if Tornado is started with the command:

tornado --config-dir=/tornado/config

then the configuration file’s full path will be /tornado/config/elasticsearch_executor.toml.

The elasticsearch_executor.toml has an optional default_auth section that allows to define the default authentication method to be used with Elasticsearch. An action can override the default method by specifying the auth payload parameter. All the authentication types defined in Elasticsearch executor are supported.

In case the default_auth section is omitted, no default authentication is available.

Defining default Authentication in elasticsearch_executor.toml

• Connect without authentication:

  [default_auth]
  type = "None"
  

• Authentication with PEM certificates:

  [default_auth]
  type = "PemCertificatePath"
  certificate_path = "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/tornado.crt.pem"
  private_key_path = "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/private/tornado.key.pem"
  ca_certificate_path = "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/root-ca.crt"
  

More details about the executor can be found in the Elasticsearch executor.

Structure and Configuration: The Foreach Executor

The foreach executor allows the recursive executions of a set of actions with dynamic parameters.

More details about the executor can be found in the foreach executor.

Structure and Configuration: The Icinga 2 Executor

The Icinga 2 executor processes and executes Actions of type “icinga2”. The configuration for this executor is specified in the icinga2_client_executor.toml file into the Tornado config folder.

For instance, if Tornado is started with the command:

tornado --config-dir=/tornado/config

then the configuration file’s full path will be /tornado/config/icinga2_client_executor.toml.

The icinga2_client_executor.toml has the following configuration options:

• server_api_url: The complete URL of the Icinga 2 APIs.

• username: The username used to connect to the Icinga 2 APIs.

• password: The password used to connect to the Icinga 2 APIs.

• disable_ssl_verification: If true, the client will not verify the SSL certificate of the Icinga 2 server.

• (optional) timeout_secs: The timeout in seconds for a call to the Icinga 2 APIs. If not provided, it defaults to 10 seconds.

More details about the executor can be found in the Icinga 2 executor documentation.

Structure and Configuration: The Director Executor

The Director executor processes and executes Actions of type “director”. The configuration for this executor is specified in the director_client_executor.toml file into the Tornado config folder.

For instance, if Tornado is started with the command:

tornado --config-dir=/tornado/config

then the configuration file’s full path will be /tornado/config/director_client_executor.toml.

The director_client_executor.toml has the following configuration options:

• server_api_url: The complete URL of the Director APIs.

• username: The username used to connect to the Director APIs.

• password: The password used to connect to the Director APIs.

• disable_ssl_verification: If true, the client will not verify the SSL certificate of the Director REST API server.

• (optional) timeout_secs: The timeout in seconds for a call to the Icinga Director REST APIs. If not provided, it defaults to 10 seconds.

More details about the executor can be found in the Director executor documentation.

Structure and Configuration: The Logger Executor

The logger executor logs the whole Action body to the standard log at the info level.

This executor has no specific configuration.

Structure and Configuration: The Script Executor

The script executor processes and executes Actions of type “script”.

This executor has no specific configuration, since everything required for script execution is contained in the Action itself as described in the executor documentation.

Structure and Configuration: The Smart Monitoring Check Result Executor

The configuration of the smart_monitoring_check_result executor is specified in the smart_monitoring_check_result.toml file into the Tornado config folder.

The smart_monitoring_check_result.toml has the following configuration options:

• pending_object_set_status_retries_attempts: The number of attempts to perform a process_check_result for an object in pending state.

• pending_object_set_status_retries_sleep_ms: The sleep time in ms between attempts to perform a process_check_result for an object in pending state.

The smart_monitoring_check_result.toml file is optional; if not provided, the following default values will be used:

• pending_object_set_status_retries_attempts = 2

• pending_object_set_status_retries_sleep_ms = 1000

More details about the executor can be found in the smart_monitoring_check_result documentation.

Tornado Backend API v1

The Tornado Backend contains endpoints that allow you to interact with Tornado through REST endpoints.

In this section we describe the version 1 of the Tornado Backend APIs.

Tornado ‘Auth’ Backend API

The ‘auth’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers in the format:

Authorization : Bearer TOKEN_HERE

The token should be a base64 encoded JSON with this user data:

{
  "user": "THE_USER_IDENTIFIER",
  "roles": ["ROLE_1", "ROLE_2", "ROLE_2"]
}

In the coming releases the current token format will be replaced by a JSON Web Token (JWT).

Tornado ‘Config’ Backend API

The ‘config’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers as in the ‘auth’ API.

Working with configuration and drafts

These endpoints allow working with the configuration and the drafts

Endpoint: get the current Tornado configuration

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/current

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
    "type": "Rules",
    "rules": [
      {
        "name": "all_emails",
        "description": "This matches all emails",
        "continue": true,
        "active": true,
        "constraint": {
          "WHERE": {
            "type": "AND",
            "operators": [
              {
                "type": "equal",
                "first": "${event.type}",
                "second": "email"
              }
            ]
          },
          "WITH": {}
        },
        "actions": [
          {
            "id": "Logger",
            "payload": {
              "subject": "${event.payload.subject}",
              "type": "${event.type}"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
  

Endpoint: get list of draft ids

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts

• response type: JSON

• response: An array of String ids

• response example:

  ["id1", "id2"]
  

Endpoint: get a draft by id

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id}

• response type: JSON

• response: the draft content

• response example:

  {
    "type": "Rules",
    "rules": [
      {
        "name": "all_emails",
        "description": "This matches all emails",
        "continue": true,
        "active": true,
        "constraint": {
          "WHERE": {},
          "WITH": {}
        },
        "actions": []
      }
    ]
  }
  

Endpoint: create a new draft and return the draft id. The new draft is an exact copy of the current configuration; anyway, a root Filter node is added if not present.

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts

• response type: JSON

• response: the draft content

• response example:

  {
    "id": "id3"
  }
  

Endpoint: update an existing draft

• HTTP Method: PUT

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id}

• request body type: JSON

• request body: The draft content in the same JSON format returned by the GET /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id} endpoint

• response type: JSON

• response: an empty json object

Endpoint: delete an existing draft

• HTTP Method: DELETE

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id}

• response type: JSON

• response: an empty json object

Endpoint: take over an existing draft

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id}/take_over

• response type: JSON

• response: an empty json object

Endpoint: deploy an existing draft

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v1_beta/config/drafts/{draft_id}/deploy

• response type: JSON

• response: an empty json object

Tornado ‘Event’ Backend API

Send Test Event Endpoint

Endpoint: match an event on the current Tornado Engine configuration

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v1_beta/event/current/send

• request type: JSON

• request example:

  {
      "event": {
        "type": "the_event_type",
        "created_ms": 123456,
        "payload": {
          "value_one": "something",
          "value_two": "something_else"
        }
      },
      "process_type": "SkipActions"
  }
  

  Where the event has the following structure:

  • type: The Event type identifier

  • created_ms: The Event creation timestamp in milliseconds since January 1, 1970 UTC

  • payload: A Map<String, Value> with event-specific data

  • process_type: Can be Full or SkipActions:

    • Full: The event is processed and linked actions are executed

    • SkipActions: The event is processed but actions are not executed

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
   "event": {
     "type": "the_event_type",
     "created_ms": 123456,
     "payload": {
       "value_one": "something",
       "value_two": "something_else"
     }
   },
   "result": {
     "type": "Rules",
     "rules": {
       "rules": {
         "emails_with_temperature": {
           "rule_name": "emails",
           "status": "NotMatched",
           "actions": [],
           "message": null
         },
         "archive_all": {
           "rule_name": "archive_all",
           "status": "Matched",
           "actions": [
             {
               "id": "archive",
               "payload": {
                 "archive_type": "one",
                 "event": {
                   "created_ms": 123456,
                   "payload": {
                     "value_one": "something",
                     "value_two": "something_else"
                   },
                   "type": "the_event_type"
                 }
               }
             }
           ],
           "message": null
         }
       },
       "extracted_vars": {}
     }
   }
  }
  

Endpoint: match an event on a specific Tornado draft

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v1_beta/event/drafts/{draft_id}/send

• request type: JSON

• request/response example: same request and response of the /api/v1_beta/event/current/send endpoint

Tornado ‘RuntimeConfig’ Backend API

These endpoints allow inspecting and changing the tornado configuration at runtime. Please note that whatever configuration change performed with these endpoints will be lost when tornado is restarted.

Get the logger configuration

Endpoint: get the current logger level configuration

• HTTP Method: GET

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
    "level": "info",
    "stdout_enabled": true,
    "apm_enabled": false
  }
  

Set the logger level

Endpoint: set the current logger level configuration

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger/level

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

  {
    "level": "warn,
    tornado=trace"
  }
  

Set the logger stdout output

Endpoint: Enable or disable the logger stdout output

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger/stdout

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

  {
    "enabled": true
  }
  

Set the logger output to Elastic APM

Endpoint: Enable or disable the logger output to Elastic APM

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger/apm

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

  {
    "enabled": true
  }
  

Set the logger configuration with priority to Elastic APM

Endpoint: This will disable the stdout and enable the Elastic APM logger; in addition, the logger level will be set to the one provided, or to “info,tornado=debug” if not present.

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger/set_apm_priority_configuration

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

{
  "logger_level": true
}

Set the logger configuration with priority to stdout

Endpoint: this will disable the Elastic APM logger and enable the stdout; in addition, the logger level will be set to the one provided in the configuration file.

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/logger/set_stdout_priority_configuration

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

  {}
  

Set the Smart Monitoring executor status

Endpoint: this activates and deactivates the Smart Monitoring executor. When the executor is in active state, it will execute incoming Actions as soon as they are produced. When instead the executor is in inactive state, all incoming Actions will be queued until the executor returns in active state.

• HTTP Method: POST

• path: /api/v1_beta/runtime_config/executor/smart_monitoring

• response: http status code 200 if the request was performed correctly

• request body type: JSON

• request body:

  {
     "active": false
  }
  

Tornado Backend API v2

The version 2 of the APIs allows for a granular querying of the processing tree, reducing the end-to-end latency with respect to the version 1 of the APIs.

The Tornado Backend APIs v2 furthermore allow for granular authorization on the processing tree for different users.

Tornado ‘Auth’ Backend API

The version 2 of the Tornado APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers in the format:

Authorization : Bearer TOKEN_HERE

The token should be a base64 encoded JSON with the following user data:

{
  "user": "THE_USER_IDENTIFIER",
  "auths": {
    "PARAM_AUTH_1": {
      "path": [
        "root"
      ],
      "roles": [
        "view",
        "edit",
        "test_event_execute_actions"
      ]
    },
    "PARAM_AUTH_2": {
      "path": [
        "root",
        "filter1",
        "filter2"
      ],
      "roles": [
        "view",
        "test_event_execute_actions"
      ]
    }
  },
  "preferences": {
    "language": "en_US"
  }
}

Tornado ‘Config’ Backend API

The ‘config’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers as in the ‘auth’ API.

Reading the current configuration

These endpoints allow to read the current configuration tree

Endpoint: get the current configuration tree of the root node.

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v2_beta/config/active/tree/children/{param_auth}

  • where {param_auth} is the key of one of the auth fields contained in the authentication header

• response type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint you need the ConfigView permission.

• response example:

  [
    {
      "type": "Filter",
      "name": "root",
      "rules_count": 60,
      "description": "This is the root node",
      "children_count": 2
    }
  ]
  

Endpoint: get the current configuration tree of a specific node. Node names must be separated by a comma.

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v2_beta/config/active/tree/children/{param_auth}/root,foo

  • where {param_auth} is the key of one of the auth fields contained in the authentication header

• response type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint you need the ConfigView permission.

• response example:

  [
    {
      "type": "Filter",
      "name": "foo",
      "rules_count": 40,
      "description": "This is the foo node",
      "children_count": 4
    }
  ]
  

Tornado ‘Rule Details’ Backend API Version 2

Reading a rule details

Endpoint: get single rule details giving the rule name and the ruleset path related to the current configuration tree. The ‘rule details’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers as in the ‘auth’ API.

• HTTP Method: GET

• path: /api/v2_beta/config/active/rule/details/admins/root,foo,rulesetA/foobar_rule

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
      "name":"foobar_rule",
      "description":"foobar_rule description",
      "continue":true,
      "active":true,
      "constraint":{
          "type": "AND",
          "operators": [
              {
                "type": "equal",
                "first": "${event.type}",
                "second": "email"
              }
          ],
          "WITH":{}
      },
      "actions":[
          {
              "id": "Logger",
              "payload": {
                  "subject": "${event.payload.subject}",
                  "type": "${event.type}"
              }
          }
      ]
  }
  

Tornado ‘Node Details’ Backend API

Reading the current configuration details

Endpoint: The ‘node details’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers as in the ‘auth’ API.

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v2_beta/config/active/tree/details/{param_auth}/root,foo

  • where {param_auth} is the key of one of the auth fields contained in the authentication header

• response type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint you need the ConfigView permission.

• response example:

   {
      "type":"Filter",
      "name":"foo",
      "description":"This filter allows events for Linux hosts",
      "active":true,
      "filter":{
          "type":"equals",
          "first":"${event.metadata.os}",
          "second":"linux"
      }
  }
  

Tornado ‘Event’ Backend API

Send Test Event Endpoint V2

Endpoint: match an event on the current Tornado Engine configuration

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v2_beta/event/active/{param_auth}

  • where {param_auth} is the key of one of the auth fields contained in the authentication header

• request type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint with a process_type equal to SkipActions you need at least one of the following permissions:

    • ConfigView

    • ConfigEdit

  • To call this endpoint with a process_type equal to Full you need the TestEventExecuteActions permission in addition to the permissions needed for the SkipActions process_type.

• request example:

  {
      "event": {
        "type": "the_event_type",
        "created_ms": 123456,
        "payload": {
          "value_one": "something",
          "value_two": "something_else"
        }
      },
      "process_type": "SkipActions"
  }
  

  Where the event has the following structure:

  • type: The Event type identifier

  • created_ms: The Event creation timestamp in milliseconds since January 1, 1970 UTC

  • payload: A Map<String, Value> with event-specific data

  • process_type: Can be Full or SkipActions:

    • Full: The event is processed and linked actions are executed

    • SkipActions: The event is processed but actions are not executed

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
   "event": {
     "type": "the_event_type",
     "created_ms": 123456,
     "payload": {
       "value_one": "something",
       "value_two": "something_else"
     }
   },
   "result": {
     "type": "Rules",
     "rules": {
       "rules": {
         "emails_with_temperature": {
           "rule_name": "emails",
           "status": "NotMatched",
           "actions": [],
           "message": null
         },
         "archive_all": {
           "rule_name": "archive_all",
           "status": "Matched",
           "actions": [
             {
               "id": "archive",
               "payload": {
                 "archive_type": "one",
                 "event": {
                   "created_ms": 123456,
                   "payload": {
                     "value_one": "something",
                     "value_two": "something_else"
                   },
                   "type": "the_event_type"
                 }
               }
             }
           ],
           "message": null
         }
       },
       "extracted_vars": {}
     }
   }
  }
  

Endpoint: match an event on a specific Tornado draft

• HTTP Method: POST

• path : /api/v2_beta/event/drafts/{draft_id}/{param_auth}

• request type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint with a process_type equal to SkipActions you need to be the owner of the draft and have the ConfigEdit permission.

  • To call this endpoint with a process_type equal to Full you need the TestEventExecuteActions permission in addition to the permissions needed for the SkipActions process_type.

• request/response example: same request and response of the /api/v2_beta/event/active/{param_auth} endpoint

Tornado ‘Tree Info’ Backend API

Endpoint: The ‘tree info’ APIs require the caller to pass an authorization token in the headers as in the ‘auth’ API.

• HTTP Method: GET

• path : /api/v2_beta/config/active/tree/info/{param_auth}

  • where {param_auth} is the key of one of the auth fields contained in the authentication header

• response type: JSON

• request permissions:

  • To call this endpoint you need the ConfigView permission.

• response example:

  {
     "rules_count": 14,
     "filters_count": 2
  }
  

Tornado Engine (Executable)

This crate contains the Tornado Engine executable code.

How It Works

The Tornado Engine executable is a configuration of the engine based on actix and built as a portable executable.

Structure of Tornado Engine

This specific Tornado Engine executable is composed of the following components:

• A JSON collector

• The engine

• The Archive executor

• The Elasticsearch Executor

• The Foreach executor

• The Icinga 2 executor

• The Director executor

• The Monitoring executor

• The Logger executor

• The Script executor

• The Smart Monitoring executor

Each component is wrapped in a dedicated actix actor.

This configuration is only one of many possible configurations. Each component has been developed as an independent library, allowing for greater flexibility in deciding whether and how to use it.

At the same time, there are no restrictions that force the use of the components into the same executable. While this is the simplest way to assemble them into a working product, the collectors and executors could reside in their own executables and communicate with the Tornado engine via a remote call. This can be achieved either through a direct TCP or HTTP call, with an RPC technology (e.g., Protobuf, Flatbuffer, or CAP’n’proto), or with a message queue system (e.g., Nats.io or Kafka) in the middle for deploying it as a distributed system.

Tornado API

The Tornado API endpoints allow to interact with a Tornado instance.

More details about the API can be found in the Tornado backend documentation.

Self-Monitoring API

The monitoring endpoints allow you to monitor the health of Tornado. They provide information about the status, activities, logs and metrics of a running Tornado instance. Specifically, they return statistics about latency, traffic, and errors.

Available endpoints:

Ping endpoint

This endpoint returns a simple message “pong - “ followed by the current date in ISO 8601 format.

Details:

• name : ping

• path : /monitoring/ping

• response type: JSON

• response example:

  {
    "message": "pong - 2019-04-12T10:11:31.300075398+02:00",
  }
  

Metrics endpoint

This endpoint returns tornado metrics in the Prometheus text format Details:

• name : metrics/prometheus

• path : /monitoring/v1/metrics/prometheus

• response type: Prometheus text format

• response example:

  # HELP events_processed_counter Events processed count
  # TYPE events_processed_counter counter
  events_processed_counter{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result"} 1
  # HELP events_processed_duration_seconds Events processed duration
  # TYPE events_processed_duration_seconds histogram
  events_processed_duration_seconds_bucket{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result",le="0.5"} 1
  events_processed_duration_seconds_bucket{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result",le="0.9"} 1
  events_processed_duration_seconds_bucket{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result",le="0.99"} 1
  events_processed_duration_seconds_bucket{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result",le="+Inf"} 1
  events_processed_duration_seconds_sum{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result"} 0.000696327
  events_processed_duration_seconds_count{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result"} 1
  # HELP events_received_counter Events received count
  # TYPE events_received_counter counter
  events_received_counter{app="tornado",event_type="icinga_process-check-result",source="http"} 1
  # HELP http_requests_counter HTTP requests count
  # TYPE http_requests_counter counter
  http_requests_counter{app="tornado"} 1
  # HELP http_requests_duration_secs HTTP requests duration
  # TYPE http_requests_duration_secs histogram
  http_requests_duration_secs_bucket{app="tornado",le="0.5"} 1
  http_requests_duration_secs_bucket{app="tornado",le="0.9"} 1
  http_requests_duration_secs_bucket{app="tornado",le="0.99"} 1
  http_requests_duration_secs_bucket{app="tornado",le="+Inf"} 1
  http_requests_duration_secs_sum{app="tornado"} 0.001695673
  http_requests_duration_secs_count{app="tornado"} 1
  

The following metrics are provided:

• events_received_counter : total number of received events grouped by source (nats, tcp, http) and event type

• events_processed_counter : total number of processed events grouped by event type

• events_processed_duration_seconds_sum : total time spent for event processing

• events_processed_duration_seconds_count : total number of processed events

• invalid_events_received_counter : total number of received event with a not valid format. This can be caused, for example, by a not valid JSON representation or by the missing of mandatory fields

• actions_received_counter : total number of received actions grouped by type

• actions_processed_counter : total number of processed actions grouped by type and outcome (failure or success)

• actions_processing_attempts_counter : total number of attempts to execute an action grouped by type and outcome (failure or success). This number can be greater than the total number of received actions because the execution of a single action can be attempted multiple times based on the defined Retry Strategy

Many other metrics can be derived from these ones, for example:

• events_processed_counter - events_received_counter = events waiting to be processed

• events_processed_duration_seconds_sum / events_processed_duration_seconds_count = mean processing time for an event

Matcher Engine

The tornado_engine_matcher crate contains the core functions of the Tornado Engine. It defines the logic for parsing Rules and Filters as well as for matching Events.

The Matcher implementation details are available here.

Processing Tree

Within the NetEye interface you can view the Tornado rule configuration graphically instead of in a command shell. The Configuration Viewer (available when click on Tornado in the left side menu) shows the processing tree in a top-down format, allowing you to verify that the structure of the rules you have created is as you intended.

Fig. 155 A processing tree

Definitions

While a more complete description of all Tornado elements is available in the official documentation, they are summarized in enough detail here so that you can understanding this page without reading the full official documentation.

• Filter: A node in the processing tree that contains (1) a filter definition and (2) a set of child nodes, each of which corresponds to a condition in the filter definition. You can use a Filter to create independent pipelines for different types of events, reducing the amount of time needed to process them.

• Implicit Filter: If a filter is not present in a node, a default filter is created which forwards an event to ALL child nodes, rather than a particular one that matched a filter condition.

• Ruleset: A leaf node that contains multiple rules to be matched against the event one by one once the filters in the parent nodes have let an event through.

• Rule: A single rule within a Ruleset, which can be matched against an event.

• Processing Tree: The entire set of filters and rules that creates the hierarchical structure where events are filtered and then matched against one or more rules.

Basic Configuration Information

The location of configuration files in the file system is pre-configured in NetEye. NetEye automatically starts Tornado as follows:

• Reads the configuration from the /neteye/shared/tornado/conf/ directory

• Starts the Tornado Engine

• Searches for Filter and Rule definitions in /neteye/shared/tornado/conf/rules.d/

The structure of this last directory reflects the Processing Tree structure. Each subdirectory can contain either:

• A Filter and a set of sub directories corresponding to the Filter’s children

• A Ruleset

Each individual Rule or Filter to be included in the processing tree must be in its own file, in JSON format (Tornado will ignore all other file types). For instance, consider this directory structure:

/tornado/config/rules
                 |- node_0
                 |    |- 0001_rule_one.json
                 |    \- 0010_rule_two.json
                 |- node_1
                 |    |- inner_node
                 |    |    \- 0001_rule_one.json
                 |    \- filter_two.json
                 \- filter_one.json

In this example, the processing tree is organized as follows:

• The root node is a filter named “filter_one”.

• The filter filter_one* has two child nodes: node_0 and node_1.

  • node_0 is a Ruleset that contains two rules called rule_one and rule_two, with an implicit filter that forwards all incoming events to both of its child rules.

  • node_1 is a filter with a single child named “inner_node”. Its filter filter_two determines which incoming events are passed to its child node.

• inner_node is a Ruleset with a single rule called rule_one.

Within a Ruleset, the alphanumeric order of the file names determines the execution order. The rule filename is composed of two parts separated by the first ‘*’ (underscore) symbol. The first part determines the rule execution order, and the second is the rule name. For example:

• 0001_rule_one.json -> 0001 determines the execution order, “rule_one” is the rule name

• 0010_rule_two.json -> 0010 determines the execution order, “rule_two” is the rule name

Rule names must be unique within their own Ruleset. There are no constraints on rule names in different Rulesets.

Similar to what happens for Rules, Filter names are also derived from the filenames. However, in this case, the entire filename corresponds to the Filter name.

In the example above, the “filter_one” node is the entry point of the processing tree. When an Event arrives, the Matcher will evaluate whether it matches the filter condition, and will pass the Event to one (or more) of the filter’s children. Otherwise it will ignore it.

A node’s children are processed independently. Thus node_0 and node_1 will be processed in isolation and each of them will be unaware of the existence and outcome of the other. This process logic is applied recursively to every node.

Multi Tenancy Roles Configuration

If your NetEye installation is tenant aware, roles associated to each user must be configured to limit their access only the processing trees they are allowed to.

In the NetEye roles (Configuration / Authentication / Roles), add or edit the role related to the tenant limited users. In the detail of the role configuration you can find the tornadocarbon module section. You can set the tenant ID in the tornadocarbon/tenant_id restriction.

Hint

You can find the list of available Tenant IDs by reading the directory names in /etc/neteye-satellites.d/. You can use this command:

# basename -a $(ls -d  /etc/neteye-satellite.d/*/)

Structure of a Filter

A Filter contains these properties:

• filter name: A string value representing a unique Filter identifier. It can be composed only of letters, numbers and the “_” (underscore) character; it corresponds to the filename, stripped from its .json extension.

• description: A string providing a high-level description of the filter.

• active: A boolean value; if false, the Filter’s children will be ignored.

• filter: A boolean operator that, when applied to an event, returns true or false. This operator determines whether an Event matches the Filter; consequently, it determines whether an Event will be processed by the Filter’s inner nodes.

Implicit Filters

If a Filter is omitted, Tornado will automatically infer an implicit filter that passes through all Events. This feature allows for less boiler-plate code when a Filter is only required to blindly forward all Events to the internal rule sets.

For example, if filter_one.json is a Filter that allows all Events to pass through, then this processing tree:

root
  |- node_0
  |    |- ...
  |- node_1
  |    |- ...
  \- filter_one.json

is equivalent to:

root
  |- node_0
  |    |- ...
  \- node_1
       |- ...

Note that in the second tree we removed the filter_one.json file. In this case, Tornado will automatically generate an implicit Filter for the root node, and all incoming Events will be dispatched to each child node.

Filters available by default

The Tornado Processing Tree provides some out of the box Filters, which match all, and only, the Events originated by some given tenant. For more information on tenants in NetEye visit the dedicated page.

These Filters are created at the top level of the Processing Tree, in such a way that it is possible to set up tenant-specific Tornado pipelines.

Given for example a tenant named acme, the matching condition of the Filter for the acme tenant will be defined as:

{
    "type": "equals",
    "first": "${event.metadata.tenant_id}",
    "second": "acme"
}

Keep in mind that these Filters must never be deleted nor modified, because they will be automatically re-created.

Note

NetEye generates one Filter for each tenant, including the default master tenant.

Structure of a Rule

A Rule is composed of a set of properties, constraints and actions.

Basic Properties

• rule name: A string value representing a unique rule identifier. It can be composed only of alphabetical characters, numbers and the “_” (underscore) character.

• description: A string value providing a high-level description of the rule.

• continue: A boolean value indicating whether to proceed with the event matching process if the current rule matches.

• active: A boolean value; if false, the rule is ignored.

When the configuration is read from the file system, the rule name is automatically inferred from the filename by removing the extension and everything that precedes the first ‘_’ (underscore) symbol. For example:

• 0001_rule_one.json -> 0001 determines the execution order, “rule_one” is the rule name

• 0010_rule_two.json -> 0010 determines the execution order, “rule_two” is the rule name

Constraints

The constraint section contains the tests that determine whether or not an event matches the rule. There are two types of constraints:

• WHERE: A set of operators that when applied to an event returns true or false

• WITH: A set of regular expressions that extract values from an Event and associate them with named variables

An event matches a rule if and only if the WHERE clause evaluates to true and all regular expressions in the WITH clause return non-empty values.

The following operators are available in the WHERE clause. Check also the examples in the remainder of this document to see how to use them.

• ‘contains’: Evaluates whether the first argument contains the second one. It can be applied to strings, arrays, and maps. The operator can also be called with the alias ‘contain’.

• ‘containsIgnoreCase’: Evaluates whether the first argument contains, in a case-insensitive way, the string passed as second argument. This operator can also be called with the alias ‘containIgnoreCase’.

• ‘equals’: Compares any two values (including, but not limited to, arrays, maps) and returns whether or not they are equal. An alias for this operator is ‘equal’.

• ‘equalsIgnoreCase’: Compares two strings and returns whether or not they are equal in a case-insensitive way. The operator can also be called with the alias ‘equalIgnoreCase’.

• ‘ge’: Compares two values and returns whether the first value is greater than or equal to the second one. If one or both of the values do not exist, it returns false.

• ‘gt’: Compares two values and returns whether the first value is greater than the second one. If one or both of the values do not exist, it returns false.

• ‘le’: Compares two values and returns whether the first value is less than or equal to the second one. If one or both of the values do not exist, it returns false.

• ‘lt’: Compares two values and returns whether the first value is less than the second one. If one or both of the values do not exist, it returns false.

• ‘ne’: This is the negation of the ‘equals’ operator. Compares two values and returns whether or not they are different. It can also be called with the aliases ‘notEquals’ and ‘notEqual’.

• ‘regex’: Evaluates whether a field of an event matches a given regular expression.

• ‘AND’: Receives an array of operator clauses and returns true if and only if all of them evaluate to true.

• ‘OR’: Receives an array of operator clauses and returns true if at least one of the operators evaluates to true.

• ‘NOT’: Receives one operator clause and returns true if the operator clause evaluates to false, while it returns false if the operator clause evaluates to true.

We use the Rust Regex library (see its github project home page ) to evaluate regular expressions provided by the WITH clause and by the regex operator. You can also refer to its dedicated documentation for details about its features and limitations.

Actions

An Action is an operation triggered when an Event matches a Rule.

Reading Event Fields

A Rule can access Event fields through the “${” and “}” delimiters. To do so, the following conventions are defined:

• The ‘.’ (dot) char is used to access inner fields.

• Keys containing dots are escaped with leading and trailing double quotes.

• Double quote chars are not accepted inside a key.

For example, given the incoming event:

{
    "type": "trap",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
        "protocol": "UDP",
        "oids": {
            "key.with.dots": "38:10:38:30.98"
        }
    }
}

The rule can access the event’s fields as follows:

• ${event.type}: Returns trap

• ${event.payload.protocol}: Returns UDP

• ${event.payload.oids."key.with.dots"}: Returns 38:10:38:30.98

• ${event.payload}: Returns the entire payload

• ${event}: Returns the entire event

• ${event.metadata.key}: Returns the value of the key key from the metadata. The metadata is a special field of an event created by Tornado to store additional information where needed (e.g. the tenant_id, etc.)

String interpolation

An action payload can also contain text with placeholders that Tornado will replace at runtime. The values to be used for the substitution are extracted from the incoming Events following the conventions mentioned in the previous section; for example, using that Event definition, this string in the action payload:

Received a ${event.type} with protocol ${event.payload.protocol}

produces:

*Received a trap with protocol UDP*

Note

Only values of type String, Number, Boolean and null are valid. Consequently, the interpolation will fail, and the action will not be executed, if the value associated with the placeholder extracted from the Event is an Array, a Map, or undefined.

Example of Filters

Using a Filter to Create Independent Pipelines

We can use Filters to organize coherent set of Rules into isolated pipelines.

In this example we will see how to create two independent pipelines, one that receives only events with type ‘email’, and the other that receives only those with type ‘trapd’.

Our configuration directory will look like this::

rules.d
  |- email
  |    |- ruleset
  |    |     |- ... (all rules about emails here)
  |    \- only_email_filter.json
  |- trapd
  |    |- ruleset
  |    |     |- ... (all rules about trapds here)
  |    \- only_trapd_filter.json
  \- filter_all.json

This processing tree has a root Filter filter_all that matches all events. We have also defined two inner Filters; the first, only_email_filter, only matches events of type ‘email’. The other, only_trapd_filter, matches just events of type ‘trap’.

Therefore, with this configuration, the rules defined in email/ruleset receive only email events, while those in trapd/ruleset receive only trapd events.

This configuration can be further simplified by removing the filter_all.json file:

rules.d
  |- email
  |    |- ruleset
  |    |     |- ... (all rules about emails here)
  |    \- only_email_filter.json
  \- trapd
       |- ruleset
       |     |- ... (all rules about trapds here)
       \- only_trapd_filter.json

In this case, in fact, Tornado will generate an implicit Filter for the root node and the runtime behavior will not change.

Below is the content of our JSON Filter files.

Content of filter_all.json (if provided):

{
  "description": "This filter allows every event",
  "active": true
}

Content of only_email_filter.json:

{
  "description": "This filter allows events of type 'email'",
  "active": true,
  "filter": {
    "type": "equals",
    "first": "${event.type}",
    "second": "email"
  }
}

Content of only_trapd_filter.json:

{
  "description": "This filter allows events of type 'trapd'",
  "active": true,
  "filter": {
    "type": "equals",
    "first": "${event.type}",
    "second": "trapd"
  }
}

Examples of Rules and operators

The ‘contains’ Operator

The contains operator is used to check whether the first argument contains the second one.

It applies in three different situations:

• The arguments are both strings: Returns true if the second string is a substring of the first one.

• The first argument is an array: Returns true if the second argument is contained in the array.

• The first argument is a map and the second is a string: Returns true if the second argument is an existing key in the map.

In any other case, it will return false.

Rule example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "contains",
      "first": "${event.payload.hostname}",
      "second": "linux"
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if in its payload appears an entry with key hostname and whose value is a string that contains linux.

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "trap",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
        "hostname": "linux-server-01"
    }
}

The ‘containsIgnoreCase’ Operator

The containsIgnoreCase operator is used to check whether the first argument contains the string passed as second argument, regardless of their capital and small letters. In other words, the arguments are compared in a case-insensitive way.

It applies in three different situations:

• The arguments are both strings: Returns true if the second string is a case-insensitive substring of the first one

• The first argument is an array: Returns true if the array passed as first parameter contains a (string) element which is equal to the string passed as second argument, regardless of uppercase and lowercase letters

• The first argument is a map: Returns true if the second argument contains, an existing, case-insensitive, key of the map

In any other case, this operator will return false.

Rule example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "containsIgnoreCase",
      "first": "${event.payload.hostname}",
      "second": "Linux"
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if in its payload it has an entry with key “hostname” and whose value is a string that contains “linux”, ignoring the case of the strings.

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "trap",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
        "hostname": "LINUX-server-01"
    }
}

Additional values for hostname that match the rule include: linuX-SERVER-02, LInux-Host-12, Old-LiNuX-FileServer, and so on.

The ‘equals’, ‘ge’, ‘gt’, ‘le’, ‘lt’ and ‘ne’ Operators

The equals, ge, gt, le, lt, ne operators are used to compare two values.

All these operators can work with values of type Number, String, Bool, null and Array.

Warning

Please be extremely careful when using these operators with numbers of type float. The representation of floating point numbers is often slightly imprecise and can lead to unexpected results (for example, see https://www.floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/ ).

Example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "OR",
      "operators": [
        {
          "type": "equals",
          "first": "${event.payload.value}",
          "second": 1000
        },
        {
          "type": "AND",
          "operators": [
            {
              "type": "ge",
              "first": "${event.payload.value}",
              "second": 100
            },
            {
              "type": "le",
              "first": "${event.payload.value}",
              "second": 200
            },
            {
              "type": "ne",
              "first": "${event.payload.value}",
              "second": 150
            },
            {
              "type": "notEquals",
              "first": "${event.payload.value}",
              "second": 160
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "lt",
          "first": "${event.payload.value}",
          "second": 0
        },
        {
          "type": "gt",
          "first": "${event.payload.value}",
          "second": 2000
        }
      ]
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if event.payload.value exists and one or more of the following conditions hold:

• It is equal to 1000

• It is between 100 (inclusive) and 200 (inclusive), but not equal to 150 or to 160

• It is less than 0 (exclusive)

• It is greater than 2000 (exclusive)

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "email",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
      "value": 110
    }
}

Here are some examples showing how these operators behave:

• [{"id":557}, {"one":"two"}] lt 3: false (cannot compare different types, e.g. here the first is an array and the second is a number)

• {id: "one"} lt {id: "two"}: false (maps cannot be compared)

• [["id",557], ["one"]] gt [["id",555], ["two"]]: true (elements in the array are compared recursively from left to right: so here “id” is first compared to “id”, then 557 to 555, returning true before attempting to match “one” and “two”)

• [["id",557]] gt [["id",555], ["two"]]: true (elements are compared even if the length of the arrays is not the same)

• true gt false: true (the value ‘true’ is evaluated as 1, and the value ‘false’ as 0; consequently, the expression is equivalent to “1 gt 0” which is true)

• “twelve” gt “two”: false (strings are compared lexically, and ‘e’ comes before ‘o’, not after it)

The ‘equalsIgnoreCase’ Operator

The equalsIgnoreCase operator is used to check whether the strings passed as arguments are equal in a case-insensitive way.

It applies only if both the first and the second arguments are strings. In any other case, the operator will return false.

Rule example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "equalsIgnoreCase",
      "first": "${event.payload.hostname}",
      "second": "Linux"
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if in its payload it has an entry with key “hostname” and whose value is a string that is equal to “linux”, ignoring the case of the strings.

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "trap",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
        "hostname": "LINUX"
    }
}

The ‘regex’ Operator

The regex operator is used to check if a string matches a regular expression. The evaluation is performed with the Rust Regex library (see its github project home page )

Rule example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "regex",
      "regex": "[a-fA-F0-9]",
      "target": "${event.type}"
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if its type matches the regular expression [a-fA-F0-9].

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "trap0",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{}
}

The ‘AND’, ‘OR’, and ‘NOT’ Operators

The and and or operators work on a set of operators, while the not operator works on one single operator. They can be nested recursively to define complex matching rules.

As you would expect:

• The and operator evaluates to true if all inner operators match

• The or operator evaluates to true if at least an inner operator matches

• The not operator evaluates to true if the inner operator does not match, and evaluates to false if the inner operator matches

Example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "AND",
      "operators": [
        {
          "type": "equals",
          "first": "${event.type}",
          "second": "rsyslog"
        },
        {
          "type": "OR",
          "operators": [
            {
              "type": "equals",
              "first": "${event.payload.body}",
              "second": "something"
            },
            {
              "type": "equals",
              "first": "${event.payload.body}",
              "second": "other"
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "NOT",
          "operator": {
              "type": "equals",
              "first": "${event.payload.body}",
              "second": "forbidden"
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": []
}

An event matches this rule if in its payload:

• The type is “rsyslog”

• AND an entry with key body whose value is wither “something” OR “other”

• AND an entry with key body is NOT “forbidden”

A matching Event is:

{
    "type": "rsyslog",
    "created_ms": 1554130814854,
    "payload":{
        "body": "other"
    }
}

A ‘Match all Events’ Rule

If the WHERE clause is not specified, the Rule evaluates to true for each incoming event.

For example, this Rule generates an “archive” Action for each Event:

{
    "description": "",
    "continue": true,
    "active": true,
    "constraint": {
      "WITH": {}
    },
    "actions": [
      {
        "id": "archive",
        "payload": {
          "event": "${event}",
          "archive_type": "one"
        }
      }
    ]
}

The ‘WITH’ Clause

The WITH clause generates variables extracted from the Event based on regular expressions. These variables can then be used to populate an Action payload.

All variables declared by a Rule must be resolved, or else the Rule will not be matched.

Two simple rules restrict the access and use of the extracted variables:

1. Because they are evaluated after the WHERE clause is parsed, any extracted variables declared inside the WITH clause are not accessible by the WHERE clause of the very same rule

2. A rule can use extracted variables declared by other rules, even in its WHERE clause, provided that:

   • The two rules must belong to the same rule set

   • The rule attempting to use those variables should be executed after the one that declares them

   • The rule that declares the variables should also match the event

The syntax for accessing an extracted variable has the form:

_variables.[.RULE_NAME].VARIABLES_NAME

If the RULE_NAME is omitted, the current rule name is automatically selected.

Example:

{
  "description": "",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
          "type": "equals",
          "first": "${event.type}",
          "second": "trap"
    },
    "WITH": {
      "sensor_description": {
        "from": "${event.payload.line_5}",
        "regex": {
          "match": "(.*)",
          "group_match_idx": 0
        }
      },
      "sensor_room": {
        "from": "${event.payload.line_6}",
        "regex": {
          "match": "(.*)",
          "group_match_idx": 0
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "actions": [
    {
      "id": "nagios",
      "payload": {
        "host": "bz-outsideserverroom-sensors",
        "service": "motion_sensor_port_4",
        "status": "Critical",
        "host_ip": "${event.payload.host_ip}",
        "room": "${_variables.sensor_room}",
        "message": "${_variables.sensor_description}"
      }
    }
  ]
}

This Rule matches only if its type is “trap” and it is possible to extract the two variables “sensor_description” and “sensor_room” defined in the WITH clause.

An Event that matches this Rule is:

{
  "type": "trap",
  "created_ms": 1554130814854,
  "payload":{
    "host_ip": "10.65.5.31",
    "line_1":  "netsensor-outside-serverroom.wp.lan",
    "line_2":  "UDP: [10.62.5.31]:161->[10.62.5.115]",
    "line_3":  "DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance 38:10:38:30.98",
    "line_4":  "SNMPv2-MIB::snmpTrapOID.0 SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.14848.0.5",
    "line_5":  "SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.14848.2.1.1.7.0 38:10:38:30.98",
    "line_6":  "SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.14848.2.1.1.2.0 \"Outside Server Room\""
  }
}

It will generate this Action:

{
  "id": "nagios",
  "payload": {
    "host": "bz-outsideserverroom-sensors",
    "service": "motion_sensor_port_4",
    "status": "Critical",
    "host_ip": "10.65.5.31",
    "room": "SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.14848.2.1.1.7.0 38:10:38:30.98",
    "message": "SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.14848.2.1.1.2.0 \"Outside Server Room\""
  }
}

The ‘WITH’ Clause - Configuration details

As already seen in the previous section, the WITH clause generates variables extracted from the Event using regular expressions. There are multiple ways of configuring those regexes to obtain the desired result.

Common entries to all configurations:

• from: An expression that determines to which value to apply the extractor regex;

• modifiers_post: A list of String modifiers to post-process the extracted value. See following section for additional details.

In addition, three parameters combined will define the behavior of an extractor:

• all_matches: whether the regex will loop through all the matches or only the first one will be considered. Accepted values are true and false. If omitted, it defaults to false

• match, named_match or single_key_match: a string value representing the regex to be executed. In detail:

  • match is used in case of an index-based regex,

  • named_match is used when named groups are present.

  • single_key_match is used to search in a map for a key that matches the regex. In case of a match, the extracted variable will be the value of the map associated with that key that matched the regex. This match will fail if more than one key matches the defined regex.

  Note that all these values are mutually exclusive.

• group_match_idx: valid only in case of an index-based regex. It is a positive numeric value that indicates which group of the match has to be extracted. If omitted, an array with all groups is returned.

To show how they work and what is the produced output, from now on, we’ll use this hypotetical email body as input:

A critical event has been received:

STATUS: CRITICAL HOSTNAME: MYVALUE2 SERVICENAME: MYVALUE3
STATUS: OK HOSTNAME: MYHOST SERVICENAME: MYVALUE41231

Our objective is to extract from it information about the host status and name, and the service name. We show how using different extractors leads to different results.

Option 1

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": false,
          "match": "STATUS:\\s+(.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(.*)",
          "group_match_idx": 1
        }
      }
  }
}

This extractor:

• processes only the first match because all_matches is false

• uses an index-based regex specified by match

• returns the group of index 1

In this case the output will be the string “CRITICAL”.

Please note that, if the group_match_idx was 0, it would have returned “STATUS: CRITICAL HOSTNAME: MYVALUE2 SERVICENAME: MYVALUE3” as in any regex the group with index 0 always represents the full match.

Option 2

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": false,
          "match": "STATUS:\\s+(.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(.*)"
        }
      }
  }
}

This extractor:

• processes only the first match because all_matches is false

• uses an index-based regex specified by match

• returns an array with all groups of the match because group_match_idx is omitted.

In this case the output will be an array of strings:

[
  "STATUS: CRITICAL HOSTNAME: MYVALUE2 SERVICENAME: MYVALUE3",
  "CRITICAL",
  "MYVALUE2",
  "MYVALUE3"
]

Option 3

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": true,
          "match": "STATUS:\\s+(.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(.*)",
          "group_match_idx": 2
        }
      }
  }
}

This extractor:

• processes all matches because all_matches is true

• uses an index-based regex specified by match

• for each match, returns the group of index 2

In this case the output will be an array of strings:

[
  "MYVALUE2", <-- group of index 2 of the first match
  "MYHOST"    <-- group of index 2 of the second match
]

Option 4

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": true,
          "match": "STATUS:\\s+(.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(.*)"
        }
      }
  }
}

This extractor:

• processes all matches because all_matches is true

• uses an index-based regex specified by match

• for each match, returns an array with all groups of the match because group_match_idx is omitted.

In this case the output will be an array of arrays of strings:

[
  [
    "STATUS: CRITICAL HOSTNAME: MYVALUE2 SERVICENAME: MYVALUE3",
    "CRITICAL",
    "MYVALUE2",
    "MYVALUE3"
  ],
  [
    "STATUS: OK HOSTNAME: MYHOST SERVICENAME: MYVALUE41231",
    "OK",
    "MYHOST",
    "MYVALUE41231"
  ]
]

The inner array, in position 0, contains all the groups of the first match while the one in position 1 contains the groups of the second match.

Option 5

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "named_match": "STATUS:\\s+(?P<STATUS>.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(?P<HOSTNAME>.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(?P<SERVICENAME>.*)"
        }
      }
  }
}

This extractor:

• processes only the first match because all_matches is omitted

• uses a regex with named groups specified by named_match

In this case the output is an object where the group names are the property keys:

{
  "STATUS": "CRITICAL",
  "HOSTNAME": "MYVALUE2",
  "SERVICENAME: "MYVALUE3"
}

Option 6

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
        "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": true,
          "named_match": "STATUS:\\s+(?P<STATUS>.*)\\s+HOSTNAME:\\s+(?P<HOSTNAME>.*)SERVICENAME:\\s+(?P<SERVICENAME>.*)"
        }
      }
  }
 }

This extractor:

• processes all matches because all_matches is true

• uses a regex with named groups specified by named_match

In this case the output is an array that contains one object for each match:

[
  {
    "STATUS": "CRITICAL",
    "HOSTNAME": "MYVALUE2",
    "SERVICENAME: "MYVALUE3"
  },
  {
    "STATUS": "OK",
    "HOSTNAME": "MYHOST",
    "SERVICENAME: "MYVALUE41231"
  },
]

The ‘WITH’ Clause - Post Modifiers

The WITH clause can include a list of String modifiers to post-process the extracted value. The available modifiers are:

• Lowercase: it converts the resulting String to lower case. Syntax:

  {
      "type": "Lowercase"
  }
  

• Map: it maps a string to another string value. Syntax:

  {
        "type": "Map",
        "mapping": {
          "Critical": "2",
          "Warning": "1",
          "Clear": "0",
          "Major": "2",
          "Minor": "1"
        },
        "default_value": "3"
  }
  

  The default_value is optional; when provided, it is used to map values that do not have a corresponding key in the mapping field. When not provided, the extractor will fail if a specific mapping is not found.

• ReplaceAll: it returns a new string with all matches of a substring replaced by the new text; the find property is parsed as a regex if is_regex is true, otherwise it is evaluated as a static string. Syntax:

  {
      "type": "ReplaceAll",
      "find": "the string to be found",
      "replace": "to be replaced with",
      "is_regex": false
  }
  

  In addition, when is_regex is true, is possible to interpolate the regex captured groups in the replace string, using the $<position> syntax, for example:

  {
      "type": "ReplaceAll",
      "find": "(?P<lastname>[^,\\s]+),\\s+(?P<firstname>\\S+)",
      "replace": "firstname: $2, lastname: $1",
      "is_regex": true
  }
  

  Valid forms of the replace field are:

  • extract from event: ${events.payload.hostname_ext}

  • use named groups from regex: $digits and other

  • use group positions from regex: $1 and other

• ToNumber: it transforms the resulting String into a number. Syntax:

  {
      "type": "ToNumber"
  }
  

• Trim: it trims the resulting String. Syntax:

  {
      "type": "Trim"
  }
  

A full example of a WITH clause using modifiers is:

{
  "WITH": {
      "server_info": {
       "from": "${event.payload.email.body}",
        "regex": {
          "all_matches": false,
          "match": "STATUS:\s+(.*)\s+HOSTNAME:\s+(.*)SERVICENAME:\s+(.*)",
          "group_match_idx": 1
        },
        "modifiers_post": [
            {
              "type": "Lowercase"
            },
            {
              "type": "ReplaceAll",
              "find": "to be found",
              "replace": "to be replaced with",
              "is_regex": false
            },
            {
              "type": "Trim"
            }
        ]
       }
     }
  }

This extractor has three modifiers that will be applied to the extracted value. The modifiers are applied in the order they are declared, so the extracted string will be transformed in lowercase, then some text replaced, and finally, the string will be trimmed.

Complete Rule Example 1

An example of a valid Rule in a JSON file is:

{
  "description": "This matches all emails containing a temperature measurement.",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WHERE": {
      "type": "AND",
      "operators": [
        {
          "type": "equals",
          "first": "${event.type}",
          "second": "email"
        }
      ]
    },
    "WITH": {
      "temperature": {
        "from": "${event.payload.body}",
        "regex": {
          "match": "[0-9]+\\sDegrees",
          "group_match_idx": 0
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "actions": [
    {
      "id": "Logger",
      "payload": {
        "type": "${event.type}",
        "subject": "${event.payload.subject}",
        "temperature:": "The temperature is: ${_variables.temperature} degrees"
      }
    }
  ]
}

This creates a Rule with the following characteristics:

• Its unique name is ‘emails_with_temperature’. There cannot be two rules with the same name.

• An Event matches this Rule if, as specified in the WHERE clause, it has type “email”, and as requested by the WITH clause, it is possible to extract the “temperature” variable from the “event.payload.body” with a non-null value.

• If an Event meets the previously stated requirements, the matcher produces an Action with id “Logger” and a payload with the three entries type, subject and temperature.

Director Executor

The Director Executor is an application that extracts data from a Tornado Action and prepares it to be sent to the Icinga Director REST API.

How It Works

This executor expects a Tornado Action to include the following elements in its payload:

1. An action_name: The Director action to perform.

2. An action_payload (optional): The payload of the Director action.

3. An icinga2_live_creation (optional): Boolean value, which determines whether to create the specified Icinga Object also in Icinga 2.

Valid values for action_name are:

• create_host: creates an object of type host in the Director

• create_service: creates an object of type service in the Director

The action_payload should contain at least all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga Director REST API for the type of object you want to create.

An example of a valid Tornado Action is:

{
    "id": "director",
    "payload": {
        "action_name": "create_host",
        "action_payload": {
          "object_type": "object",
          "object_name": "my_host_name",
          "address": "127.0.0.1",
          "check_command": "hostalive",
          "vars": {
            "location": "Bolzano"
          }
        },
        "icinga2_live_creation": true
    }
}

Logger Executor

An Executor that logs received Actions.

How it Works

The Logger executor simply outputs the whole Action body to the standard log at the info level.

Script Executor

An executor that runs custom shell scripts on a Unix-like system.

How It Works

To be correctly processed by this executor, an Action should provide two entries in its payload: the path to a script on the local filesystem of the executor process, and all the arguments to be passed to the script itself.

The script path is identified by the payload key script. It is important to verify that the executor has both read and execute rights at that path.

The script arguments are identified by the payload key args; if present, they are passed as command line arguments when the script is executed.

An example of a valid Action is:

{
    "id": "script",
    "payload" : {
        "script": "./usr/script/my_script.sh",
        "args": [
            "tornado",
            "rust"
        ]
    }
}

In this case the executor will launch the script my_script.sh with the arguments “tornado” and “rust”. Consequently, the resulting command will be:

./usr/script/my_script.sh tornado rust

Other Ways of Passing Arguments

There are different ways to pass the arguments for a script:

• Passing arguments as a String:

  {
    "id": "script",
    "payload" : {
        "script": "./usr/script/my_script.sh",
        "args": "arg_one arg_two -a --something else"
    }
  }
  

  If args is a String, the entire String is appended as a single argument to the script. In this case the resulting command will be:

  ./usr/script/my_script.sh "arg_one arg_two -a --something else"
  

• Passing arguments in an array:

  {
    "id": "script",
    "payload" : {
        "script": "./usr/script/my_script.sh",
        "args": [
            "--arg_one tornado",
            "arg_two",
            true,
            100
        ]
    }
  }
  

  Here the argument’s array elements are passed as four arguments to the script in the exact order they are declared. In this case the resulting command will be:

  ./usr/script/my_script.sh "--arg_one tornado" arg_two true 100
  

• Passing arguments in a map:

  {
    "id": "script",
    "payload" : {
        "script": "./usr/script/my_script.sh",
        "args": {
          "arg_one": "tornado",
          "arg_two": "rust"
      }
    }
  }
  

  When arguments are passed in a map, each entry in the map is considered to be a (option key, option value) pair. Each pair is passed to the script using the default style to pass options to a Unix executable which is –key followed by the value. Consequently, the resulting command will be:

  ./usr/script/my_script.sh --arg_one tornado --arg_two rust
  

  Please note that ordering is not guaranteed to be preserved in this case, so the resulting command line could also be:

  ./usr/script/my_script.sh --arg_two rust --arg_one tornado
  

  Thus if the order of the arguments matters, you should pass them using either the string- or the array-based approach.

• Passing no arguments:

  {
    "id": "script",
    "payload" : {
        "script": "./usr/script/my_script.sh"
    }
  }
  

  Since arguments are not mandatory, they can be omitted. In this case the resulting command will simply be:

  ./usr/script/my_script.sh
  

Monitoring Executor

Warning

The monitoring Executor is deprecated, please use the Smart Monitoring Check Result Executor which is equivalent but it is easier to configure.

The Monitoring Executor is an executor that permits to perform Icinga process-check-results also in the case that the Icinga object for which you want to perform the process-check-result does not yet exist.

This is done by means of executing the action process-check-result with the Icinga Executor, and by executing the actions create_host/create_service with the Director Executor, in case the underlying Icinga objects do not yet exist in Icinga.

Warning

The Monitoring Executor requires the live-creation feature of the Icinga Director to be exposed in the REST API. If this is not the case, the actions of this executor will always fail in case the Icinga Objects are not already present in Icinga 2.

How It Works

This executor expects a Tornado Action to include the following elements in its payload:

1. An action_name: The Monitoring action to perform.

2. A process_check_result_payload: The payload for the Icinga 2 process-check-result action.

3. A host_creation_payload: The payload which will be sent to the Icinga Director REST API for the host creation.

4. A service_creation_payload: The payload which will be sent to the Icinga Director REST API for the service creation (mandatory only in case action_name is create_and_or_process_service_passive_check_result).

Valid values for action_name are:

• create_and_or_process_host_passive_check_result: sets the passive check result for a host, and, if necessary, it also creates the host.

• create_and_or_process_service_passive_check_result: sets the passive check result for a service, and, if necessary, it also creates the service.

The process_check_result_payload should contain at least all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga API to perform the action. The object on which you want to set the passive check result must be specified with the field host in case of action create_and_or_process_host_passive_check_result, and service in case of action create_and_or_process_service_passive_check_result (e.g. specifying a set of objects on which to apply the passive check result with the parameter filter is not valid)

The host_creation_payload should contain at least all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga Director REST API to perform the creation of a host.

The servie_creation_payload should contain at least all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga Director REST API to perform the creation of a service.

An example of a valid Tornado Action is:

{
  "id": "monitoring",
  "payload": {
    "action_name": "create_and_or_process_service_passive_check_result",
    "process_check_result_payload": {
      "exit_status": "2",
      "plugin_output": "Output message",
      "service": "myhost!myservice",
      "type": "Service"
    },
    "host_creation_payload": {
      "object_type": "Object",
      "object_name": "myhost",
      "address": "127.0.0.1",
      "check_command": "hostalive",
      "vars": {
        "location": "Rome"
      }
    },
    "service_creation_payload": {
      "object_type": "Object",
      "host": "myhost",
      "object_name": "myservice",
      "check_command": "ping"
    }
  }
}

The flowchart shown in Fig. 156 helps to understand the behaviour of the Monitoring Executor in relation to Icinga 2 and Icinga Director REST APIs.

Fig. 156 Flowchart of Monitoring Executor.

Foreach Executor

An Executor that loops through a set of data and executes a list of actions for each entry.

How it Works

The Foreach executor extracts all values from an array of elements and injects each value to a list of action under the item key.

It has two mandatory configuration entries in its payload:

• target: the array of elements

• actions: the array of action to execute

For example, given this rule definition:

{
  "name": "do_something_foreach_value",
  "description": "This uses a foreach loop",
  "continue": true,
  "active": true,
  "constraint": {
    "WITH": {}
  },
  "actions": [
    {
      "id": "foreach",
      "payload": {
        "target": "${event.payload.values}",
        "actions": [
          {
            "id": "logger",
            "payload": {
              "source": "${event.payload.source}",
              "value": "the value is ${item}"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "archive",
            "payload": {
              "event": "${event}",
              "item_value": "${item}"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

When an event with this payload is received:

{
  "type": "some_event",
  "created_ms": 123456,
  "payload":{
    "values": ["ONE", "TWO", "THREE"],
    "source": "host_01"
  }
}

Then the target of the foreach action is the array ["ONE", "TWO", "THREE"]; consequently, each one of the two inner actions is executed three times; the first time with item = “ONE”, then with item = “TWO” and, finally, with item = “THREE”.

Archive Executor

The Archive Executor is an executor that writes the Events from the received Actions to a file.

Requirements and Limitations

The archive executor can only write to locally mounted file systems. In addition, it needs read and write permissions on the folders and files specified in its configuration.

Configuration

The archive executor has the following configuration options:

• file_cache_size: The number of file descriptors to be cached. You can improve overall performance by keeping files from being continuously opened and closed at each write.

• file_cache_ttl_secs: The Time To Live of a file descriptor. When this time reaches 0, the descriptor will be removed from the cache.

• base_path: A directory on the file system where all logs are written. Based on their type, rule Actions received from the Matcher can be logged in subdirectories of the base_path. However, the archive executor will only allow files to be written inside this folder.

• default_path: A default path where all Actions that do not specify an archive_type in the payload are logged.

• paths: A set of mappings from an archive_type to an archive_path, which is a subpath relative to the base_path. The archive_path can contain variables, specified by the syntax ${parameter_name}, which are replaced at runtime by the values in the Action’s payload.

The archive path serves to decouple the type from the actual subpath, allowing you to write Action rules without worrying about having to modify them if you later change the directory structure or destination paths.

As an example of how an archive_path is computed, suppose we have the following configuration:

base_path =  "/tmp"
default_path = "/default/out.log"
file_cache_size = 10
file_cache_ttl_secs = 1

[paths]
"type_one" = "/dir_one/file.log"
"type_two" = "/dir_two/${hostname}/file.log"

and these three incoming actions:

action_one:

{
    "id": "archive",
    "payload": {
        "archive_type": "type_one",
        "event": "__the_incoming_event__"
    }
}

action_two:

{
    "id": "archive",
    "payload": {
        "archive_type": "type_two",
        "hostname": "net-test",
        "event": "__the_incoming_event__"
    }
}

action_three:

{
    "id": "archive",
    "payload": {
        "event": "__the_incoming_event__"
    }
}

then:

• action_one will be archived in /tmp/dir_one/file.log

• action_two will be archived in /tmp/dir_two/net-test/file.log

• action_three will be archived in /tmp/default/out.log

How it Works

The archive executor expects an Action to include the following elements in the payload:

1. An event: The Event to be archived should be included in the payload under the key event.

2. An archive type (optional): The archive type is specified in the payload under the key archive_type.

When an archive_type is not specified, the default_path is used (as in action_three). Otherwise, the executor will use the archive_path in the paths configuration corresponding to the archive_type key (action_one and action_two).

When an archive_type is specified but there is no corresponding key in the mappings under the paths configuration, or it is not possible to resolve all path parameters, then the Event will not be archived. Instead, the archiver will return an error.

The Event from the payload is written into the log file in JSON format, one event per line.

Elasticsearch Executor

The Elasticsearch Executor is a functionality that extracts data from a Tornado Action and sends it to Elasticsearch.

How It Works

The executor expects a Tornado Action that includes the following elements in its payload:

1. An endpoint : The Elasticsearch endpoint which Tornado will call to create the Elasticsearch document.

2. An index : The name of the Elasticsearch index in which the document will be created.

3. An data: The content of the document that will be sent to Elasticsearch.

4. (optional) An auth: a method of authentication, see next section.

An example of a valid Tornado Action is a json document like this:

{
    "id": "elasticsearch",
    "payload": {
        "endpoint": "http://localhost:9200",
        "index": "tornado-example",
        "data": {
            "user" : "kimchy",
            "post_date" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
            "message" : "trying out Elasticsearch"
        }
    }
}

The Elasticsearch Executor will create a new document in the specified Elasticsearch index for each action executed; also the specified index will be created if it does not already exist.

In the above json document, no authentication is specified, therefore the default authentication method created during the executor creation is used. This method is saved in a tornado configuration file (elasticsearch_executor.toml) and can be overridden for each Tornado Action, as described in the next section.

Elasticsearch authentication

When the Elasticsearch executor is created, a default authentication method can be specified and will be used to authenticate to Elasticsearch, if not differently specified by the action. On the contrary, if a default method is not defined at creation time, then each action that does not specify an authentication method will fail.

To use a specific authentication method the action should include the auth field with either of the following authentication types: None or PemCertificatePath, like shown in the following examples.

• None: the client connects to Elasticsearch without authentication

  Example:

  {
      "id": "elasticsearch",
      "payload": {
          "index": "tornado-example",
          "endpoint": "http://localhost:9200",
          "data": {
              "user": "myuser"
          },
          "auth": {
              "type": "None"
          }
      }
  }
  

• PemCertificatePath: the client connects to Elasticsearch using the PEM certificates read from the local file system. When this method is used, the following information must be provided:

  • certificate_path: path to the public certificate accepted by Elasticsearch

  • private_key_path: path to the corresponding private key

  • ca_certificate_path: path to CA certificate needed to verify the identity of the Elasticsearch server

  Example:

  {
      "id": "elasticsearch",
      "payload": {
          "index": "tornado-example",
          "endpoint": "http://localhost:9200",
          "data": {
              "user": "myuser"
          },
          "auth": {
              "type": "PemCertificatePath",
              "certificate_path": "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/tornado.crt.pem",
              "private_key_path": "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/private/tornado.key.pem",
              "ca_certificate_path": "/path/to/tornado/conf/certs/root-ca.crt"
          }
      }
  }
  

Icinga 2 Executor

The Icinga 2 Executor is an executor that extracts data from a Tornado Action and prepares it to be sent to the Icinga 2 API.

How It Works

This executor expects a Tornado Action to include the following elements in its payload:

1. An icinga2_action_name: The Icinga 2 action to perform.

2. An icinga2_action_payload (optional): The parameters of the Icinga 2 action.

The icinga2_action_name should match one of the existing Icinga 2 actions.

The icinga2_action_payload should contain at least all mandatory parameters expected by the specific Icinga 2 action.

An example of a valid Tornado Action is:

{
    "id": "icinga2",
    "payload": {
        "icinga2_action_name": "process-check-result",
        "icinga2_action_payload": {
            "exit_status": "${event.payload.exit_status}",
            "plugin_output": "${event.payload.plugin_output}",
            "filter": "host.name==\"example.localdomain\"",
            "type": "Host"
        }
    }
}

Smart Monitoring Check Result Executor

The Smart Monitoring Check Result Executor allows to perform an Icinga process-check-results in case the Icinga 2 object for which you want to carry out that action does not exist. Moreover, this Executor also ensures that no outdated process-check-result will overwrite newer check results already present in Icinga 2.

In case the underlying Icinga 2 objects do not exist in Icinga 2, the actions create_host/create_service are performed via the Director Executor.

Warning

The Smart Monitoring Check Result Executor requires the live-creation feature of the Icinga Director to be exposed in the REST API. If this is not the case, the actions of this executor will always fail in case the Icinga Objects are not already present in Icinga 2.

Note however, that the Icinga agent cannot be created live using Smart Monitoring Executor because it always requires a defined endpoint in the configuration which is not possible since the Icinga API doesn’t support live-creation of an endpoint.

To ensure that outdated check results are not processed, the action process-check-result is carried out by the Icinga 2 Executor with the parameters execution_start and execution_end inherited by the Action definition or set equal to the value of the created_ms property of the originating Tornado Event. Section Discarded Check Results explains how the Executor handles these cases.

How It Works

This executor expects a Tornado Action to include the following elements in its payload:

1. A check_result: The basic data to build the Icinga 2 process-check-result action payload.

2. A host: The data to build the payload which will be sent to the Icinga Director REST API for the host creation.

3. A service: The data to build the payload which will be sent to the Icinga Director REST API for the service creation (optional).

The check_result should contain all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga API except the following ones that are automatically filled by the executor:

• host

• service

• type

The host and service should contain all mandatory parameters expected by the Icinga Director REST API to perform the creation of a host and/or a service, except:

• object_type

The service key is optional. When it is included in the action payload, the executor will invoke the process-check-results call to set the status of a service; otherwise, it will set the one of a host.

An example of a valid Tornado Action is to set the status of the service myhost|myservice:

{
  "id": "smart_monitoring_check_result",
  "payload": {
    "check_result": {
      "exit_status": "2",
      "plugin_output": "Output message"
    },
    "host": {
      "object_name": "myhost",
      "address": "127.0.0.1",
      "check_command": "hostalive",
      "vars": {
        "location": "Rome"
      }
    },
    "service": {
       "object_name": "myservice",
       "check_command": "ping"
    }
  }
}

By simply removing the service key, the same action will set the status of the host myhost:

{
  "id": "smart_monitoring_check_result",
  "payload": {
    "check_result": {
      "exit_status": "2",
      "plugin_output": "Output message"
    },
    "host": {
      "object_name": "myhost",
      "address": "127.0.0.1",
      "check_command": "hostalive",
      "vars": {
        "location": "Rome"
      }
    }
  }
}

The flowchart shown in Fig. 156 helps to understand the behaviour of the Monitoring Executor in relation to Icinga 2 and Icinga Director REST APIs.

Retry logic

When a new object is created, after the call to the process_check_result the executor calls the Icinga /v1/objects API to check whether the new object is still in PENDING state. In case the object is found to be pending, the executor will call again the process_check_result API, for a predefined number of attempts, until the check to the object state returns that it is not PENDING anymore.

Discarded Check Results

Some process-check-results may be discarded by Icinga 2 if more recent check results already exist for the target object. In this situation the Executor does not retry the Action, but simply logs an error containing the tag DISCARDED_PROCESS_CHECK_RESULT in the configured Tornado Logger.

The log message showing a discarded process-check-result will be similar to the following excerpt, enclosed in an ActionExecutionError:

SmartMonitoringExecutor - Process check result action failed with error ActionExecutionError {
  message: "Icinga2Executor - Icinga2 API returned an unrecoverable error. Response status: 500 Internal Server Error.
    Response body: {\"results\":[{\"code\":409.0,\"status\":\"Newer check result already present. Check result for 'my-host!my-service' was discarded.\"}]}",
  can_retry: false,
  code: None,
  data: {
    "payload":{"execution_end":1651054222.0,"execution_start":1651054222.0,"exit_status":0,"plugin_output":"Some process check result","service":"my-host!my-service","type":"Service"},
    "tags":["DISCARDED_PROCESS_CHECK_RESULT"],
    "url":"https://icinga2-master.neteyelocal:5665/v1/actions/process-check-result",
    "method":"POST"
  }
}.

Common Logger

The tornado_common_logger crate contains the logger configuration for the Tornado components.

The configuration is based on three entries:

• level: A list of comma separated logger verbosity levels. Valid values for a level are: trace, debug, info, warn, and error. If only one level is provided, this is used as global logger level. Otherwise, a list of per package levels can be used. E.g.:

  • level=info: the global logger level is set to info

  • level=warn,tornado=debug: the global logger level is set to warn, the tornado package logger level is set to debug

• stdout-output: A boolean value that determines whether the Logger should print to standard output. Valid values are true and false.

• file-output-path: An optional string that defines a file path in the file system. If provided, the Logger will append any output to that file.

The configuration subsection logger.tracing_elastic_apm allows to configure the connection to Elastic APM for the tracing functionality. The following entries can be configured:

• apm_output: Whether the Logger data should be sent to the Elastic APM Server. Valid values are true and false.

• apm_server_url: The URL of the Elastic APM Server.

• apm_server_api_credentials.id: (Optional) the ID of the API Key for authenticating to the Elastic APM server.

• apm_server_api_credentials.key: (Optional) the key of the API Key for authenticating to the Elastic APM server. If apm_server_api_credentials.id and apm_server_api_credentials.key are not provided, they will be read from the file <config_dir>/apm_server_api_credentials.json

• exporter.max_queue_size: (Optional) The maximum queue size of the tracing batch exporter to buffer spans for delayed processing. Defaults to 65536.

• exporter.scheduled_delay_ms: The delay interval in milliseconds between two consecutive exports of batches. Defaults to 5000 (5 seconds).

• exporter.max_export_batch_size: The maximum number of spans to export in a single batch. Defaults to 512.

• exporter.max_export_timeout_ms: The time (in milliseconds) for which the export can run before it is cancelled. Defaults to 30000 (30 seconds).

In Tornado executables, the Logger configuration is usually defined with command line parameters managed by structopt. In that case, the default level is set to warn, stdout-output is disabled and the file-output-path is empty.

For example:

./tornado --level=info --stdout-output --file-output-path=/tornado/log

Matcher Engine Implementation Details

Matcher Crate

The Matcher crate contains the core logic of the Tornado Engine. It is in charge of: - Receiving events from the collectors - Processing incoming events and detecting which Filter and Rule they satisfy - Triggering the expected actions

Due to its strategic position, its performance is of utmost importance for global throughput.

The code’s internal structure is kept simple on purpose, and the final objective is reached by splitting the global process into a set of modular, isolated and well-tested blocks of logic. Each “block” communicates with the others through a well-defined API, which at the same time hides its internal implementation.

This modularization effort is twofold; first, it minimizes the risk that local changes will have a global impact; and second, it separates functional from technical complexity, so that increasing functional complexity does not result in increasing code complexity. As a consequence, the maintenance and evolutionary costs of the code base are expected to be linear in the short, mid- and long term.

At a very high level view, when the matcher initializes, it follows these steps:

• Configuration (see the code in the “config” module): The configuration phase loads a set of files from the file system. Each file is a Filter or a Rule in JSON format. The outcome of this step is a processing tree composed of Filter and Rule configurations created from the JSON files.

• Validation (see the code in the “validator” module): The Validator receives the processing tree configuration and verifies that all nodes respect a set of predefined constraints (e.g., the identifiers cannot contain dots). The output is either the same processing tree as the input, or else an error.

• Match Preparation (see the code in the “matcher” module): The Matcher receives the processing tree configuration, and for each node:

  • if the node is a Filter:

    • Builds the Accessors for accessing the event properties using the AccessorBuilder (see the code in the “accessor” module).

    • Builds an Operator for evaluating whether an event matches the Filter itself (using the OperatorBuilder, code in the “operator” module).

  • if the node is a rule:

    • Builds the Accessors for accessing the event properties using the AccessorBuilder (see the code in the “accessor” module).

    • Builds the Operator for evaluating whether an event matches the “WHERE” clause of the rule (using the OperatorBuilder, code in the “operator” module).

    • Builds the Extractors for generating the user-defined variables using the ExtractorBuilder (see the code in the “extractor” module). This step’s output is an instance of the Matcher that contains all the required logic to process an event against all the defined rules. A matcher is stateless and thread-safe, thus a single instance can be used to serve the entire application load.

• Listening: Listen for incoming events and then match them against the stored Filters and Rules.

Tornado Monitoring and Statistics

Tornado Engine performance metrics are exposed via Tornado APIs and periodically collected by a dedicated telegraf instance telegraf_tornado_monitoring.service. Metrics are stored into the database master_tornado_monitoring in InfluxDB.

Tornado Monitoring and Statistics gives an insight about what data Tornado is processing and how. These information can be useful in several scenarios, including workload inspection, identification of bottlenecks, and issue debugging. A common use case is to identify performance-related issues: for example a difference between the amount of events received and events processed by Tornado may identify a performance problem because Tornado does not have enough resources to handle the current workload.

Examples of collected metrics are:

• events_processed_counter: total amount of event processed by Tornado Engine

• events_received_counter: total amount of events received by Tornado Engine through all collectors

• actions_processed_counter: total amount of actions executed by Tornado Engine

Metrics will be automatically deleted according to the selected retention policy.

The user can configure Tornado Monitoring and Statistics via GUI under Configuration / Modules / tornadocarbon / Configuration. Two parameters are available:

• Tornado Monitoring Retention Policy: defines the number of days for which metrics are retained in InfluxDB and defaults to 7 days, after which data will be no longer available.

• Tornado Monitoring Polling Interval: sets how often the collector queries the Tornado APIs to gather metrics and defaults to 5 seconds.

To apply changes you have to either run neteye_secure_install for both options or execute /usr/share/neteye/tornadocarbon/scripts/apply_tornado_monitoring_retention_policy.sh or /usr/share/neteye/tornadocarbon/scripts/apply_tornado_monitoring_polling_interval.sh, according to the parameter changed.

Note

On a NetEye Cluster, execute the command on the node where icingaweb2 is active.